


The Accidental Proposal

by ThatsNoShipItsASpaceStation



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Background Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer, Established Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer, F/F, Fluff, has a sex scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-03-07 20:49:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18880990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatsNoShipItsASpaceStation/pseuds/ThatsNoShipItsASpaceStation
Summary: Crossing different cultural barriers even amongst Earthlings can be a tricky business, but then throw aliens from different planets into the mix and suddenly you have a recipe for trouble. In other words, Lena accidentally proposes to Supergirl in Kryptonian customs and hijinks ensue.----This fic ended up talking a lot from Lena's POV and in general showcases Lena being a super-businesswoman (like an office work fic basically). Roughly takes place in season 2. One chapter has rated E content and has been labeled as such, all other chapters are T.Inspired by this one-shot (which is really cute and you should go read if you like this):https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548663/chapters/21951440





	1. The Thank Supergirl Initiative

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Kara is Terrible at Keeping Secrets](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9548663) by [Rhino (RhinoMouse)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhinoMouse/pseuds/Rhino). 



> Ok so, I don't know how writing fics inspired off of other people's fics exactly works around here so I hope I'm doing this right! I just really loved this other story but it was so short and I needed more so I just had to write it out before it kept bouncing around in my head.  
> \---------

Lena Luthor, CEO of L-Corp, sat at her desk pondering the problem. The thing was she owed Supergirl – and not just a little either. Supergirl had not only saved her life multiple times but the hero had made a conscientious effort to support her publicly, and that was no small thing given the family history between the Luthors and Supers.

The CEO sighed, feeling like she didn't know where to start, and decided that she probably needed to bring in some expert opinions so she set up a meeting on her calendar. When she called her PR Manager Patty Sakamoto to tell her about the idea for the meeting, Patty was ecstatic. The manager felt that thanking Supergirl publicly could be great for L-Corp's reputation and she promised to “bring the big guns”, as she put it, to the meeting. Lena thanked her and hung up.

The next day, Lena walked into the big conference room on the floor right below hers and was surprised to find leads from nearly every major division of L-Corp – if not the managers, then someone relatively highly placed in that division. The youngest Luthor kicked off the meeting with a short introduction to the basic idea of what they wanted to do, and then let them dive right in.

It was surprisingly fruitful. All the different brains put together gave them a large list of possible ideas, even if it wasn’t on something they normally dealt with, ranging from a charity fundraiser in Supergirl’s name, to new defensive tech or supersuit improvements the Girl of Steel could use in her duties, to symbolic gifts that didn’t really provide a functional benefit but would symbolically represent L-Corp’s gratitude – plaques, jewelry, statues, or similar.

Lena actually wasn’t much for the symbolic gifts idea, but she had to admit that it would probably be the easiest one to do on short notice. Her favorite by far was the idea about giving Supergirl some new tech to help her in her job, but even she had to admit that it would likely take months if not years of effort, and would probably also require Supergirl’s pre-approval so they could get the current specs of her suit. Lena sighed and shook her head, forced to veto that idea.

Her one concession, however, was to tell the heads of her developmental tech divisions to keep an eye on any R&D that could potentially be applied to defensive suit improvements and flag them for extra funding and personnel. If Lena couldn’t give something that valuable to Supergirl now, at least she could plan to do that in the future.

So that left the other ideas. The division heads generally agreed that the gift idea like a plaque or similar wasn’t really adequate to express the gratitude of an entire company, and they all had been saved in one form or another by Supergirl at least once – the entire city had been – so everyone present wanted to get it right. Besides, Lena was definitely leaning more towards a charity event – which then lead of course to the question of which charity or charities should benefit. After some time bouncing ideas around, they had generally picked charities focused on alien benefit, and the one that seemed most promising to Lena was the alien clinic.

Lena hadn’t even realized that there was a clinic specializing in alien medicine, but now that she thought about it, it made sense. Probably not many aliens could just walk into a human medical facility and get treated. This of course prompted her to ask the room if L-Corp had any research ongoing in alien medicine, and when she realized that there were no biomedical R&D heads present, they called up the current head researcher on the conference desk phone, Dr. Tomaz.

The doctor confirmed what Lena had expected – not only was there nothing currently being researched, but there weren’t even any researchers at L-Corp who had experience in alien biomed or physiology. The CEO thanked the doctor for her help and informed her that Lena would be in touch within the next two weeks to work on rectifying that – and asked if she could please provide names of researchers they could bring on board and/or company acquisitions in that area.

After the short tangent, they returned to the topic at hand and finally settled on a list of major charities that benefited aliens, subject to a review of the charity finances and approval from Supergirl herself. Although Lena agreed with her senior staff that Supergirl might not know which ones to choose since she mostly worked with more heroic and physical tasks, so they would probably need to vet and compile a list prior to asking the hero for her feedback.

Right as they were wrapping up the meeting, Jess, Lena’s personal assistant, suggested that they could also give Supergirl some small gift in addition to the charity event – maybe even present her with the gift at the event. This would both give the charity event a more personal touch and yet not be as inadequate as a symbolic gift by itself.

Lena immediately liked this idea, but since she had another important appointment right then and didn’t want the meeting to run over, she asked everyone to please think on this symbolic gift idea and they’d reconvene in a few days to go over and tacitly approve the final plan. Of course the final approval would fall to the board of directors, but Lena liked to have input from her division heads as well on major company direction changes – and this, once Lena looked at the list of planned changes coming out of the meeting, seemed like a significant new direction for L-Corp.

The CEO walked through the door to her office after ending the meeting, and sighed in satisfaction. This was how she wanted the company to move forward again – this was how they could make L-Corp a force for good. Lena felt very pleased with herself.

Glancing back down again at her list of proposed company changes, she realized that she had a lot of alien-related items. Lena pursed her lips, musing that she probably should hire or promote someone to be in charge of Alien Relations. She scribbled a quick note to herself to set up a personnel review with Jess before she forgot. It would be awesome if L-Corp had an actual alien for that job, but Lena wasn’t exactly sure how likely that would be. She was very aware of the troubled history of her company, not to mention her family, had with aliens and she was pretty sure aliens would be aware of that history, too.

Lena turned around at the sound of a knock on her door and smiled warmly as the door opened. Kara walked in with her usual sunny smile and a bag of takeout in one hand, just as they usually did on their lunch dates – although Lena internally sighed at the word ‘date’, and wished they were actually romantic dates. So far, the blonde reporter had not seemed to notice that a romantic interest was even an option, but it wasn't for want of trying on the part of the youngest Luthor. Not even if she was starting to accept the fact that Kara was probably straight.

Still, she enjoyed the reporter’s company, and told herself that even if Lena's advances hadn’t been noticed, that Kara had seemed to enjoy spending time with her also. As much as the CEO enjoyed productive business meetings, there was nothing that brightened her day more than seeing Kara and she always tried to make time to hang out with the blonde reporter.

Kara happily told Lena about her day, meeting various interesting people to interview for her stories and alternately griping about her boss Snapper. When Kara turned to ask the CEO how her day had gone, Lena smiled, saying that it was really productive and mentioning that they had a new charity event that they were starting to plan for.

The reporter was of course excited and interested – Lena privately wondered if there was anything the other girl didn’t get excited about – and the youngest Luthor asked her if she’d heard of any of the charities. Kara didn’t really know about them, but when Lena mentioned about whether the alien clinic had a charity associated with it, the blonde told her that she had heard something about them and would ask around with her contacts to find more.

Realizing that she had broken one of her personal rules about not doing work during lunch, Lena apologized to the blonde and dragged the conversation to something else – in this case, the latest Disney movie that had just come out. The CEO knew that Kara _adored_ Disney movies and usually watched them on her sister nights or her friendly movie nights she hosted at her apartment. Lena had gone to a few of them and knew that Kara was just as effusive at home as she was at work.

Lena sighed as she watched Kara adorably explain the plot for the newest movie, completely smitten and wondering if it was even possible to fall harder for this woman than she already was.

\----

It was two days later when Jess emailed her an update on the Thank Supergirl Initiative – as a couple of her senior staff had taken to calling it – and passed her a list of some of the gift ideas they were thinking of. Lena frowned at a couple of the items, noting on her review sheet that they either were too impersonal (a plaque/engraving) or too romantic/personal (a necklace). She re-sorted the list in order of her preference, putting ‘bracelet’ and ‘statue (waterfront)’ at the top, and sent it back to Jess before returning to her quarterly financial report she had been reviewing.

Just then, her phone buzzed on the table, and Lena looked down. Seeing Kara’s name, she picked it up and answered the call smiling.

\----

When Lena finally got the ‘big guns’ back together again, her PR manager Patty was almost bouncing at all the good press potential they had come up with in the past week. The CEO found herself thinking privately that Patty and Kara would probably get along like a house on fire – wait, cancel that idea, otherwise something or someone might actually combust.

They dove right into the meeting and pulled up both the list of vetted charities and the symbolic gift ideas. Quickly giving everyone a chance to point out any problems with the charity list – there were none – they moved onto the gifts, which Lena had assumed would comprise the bulk of today’s discussion.

Soon enough, she was proved right when an energetic debate developed over the statue and bracelet, which had turned out to be the general consensus for the top two. In particular there were a handful of staunch supporters of each idea that went back and forth.

Lupe Rodriguez, one of her lead materials researchers, pointed out, “The bracelet would be something that Supergirl could personally get to have and use, whereas the statue wouldn’t. I think it’s a much more appropriate gift.”

Mel Ngoli, from her city relations department, argued, “If Supergirl has a secret identity then she might not able to wear it that much – especially if it got in the way of combat.” She gesticulated in her normal exaggerated style as she made her point. “But a statue would be visible all the time without regard to whether Supergirl was able to wear it. The entire city would also be able to appreciate it, so it was like a joint gift to the entire city.”

Lupe countered, “But this isn’t a gift to the people of National City – this is for Supergirl. Also, we can’t exactly present a statue at the charity event.”

Mel dismissed the concerns with a wave of her hand. “We could always just announce the statue at the event and then we’d even get a second PR event out of the deal when we unveil the statue.”

When there was a pause in the discourse, Lena decided to step in. “Alright, so I have two options for the gift then, we’re all decided on one of those two?” At the heads nodding around the table, she continued. “Excellent, I’ll pass on the pros and cons with the suggested idea to the board for final approval. Any more suggestions or questions before we wrap this up?”

A hand went up from Brad Alfords in finance, and she sighed inwardly – she still hadn’t gotten him to lighten up from his schoolboy habit of always wanting to raise his hand. Lena nodded for him to continue.

He cleared his throat. “About the new announced Alien Relations position – is that open to current employees only or will it be a public position?”

“If you have anyone to recommend for that position, please be sure to forward them to the designated hiring manager regardless, but it will be a public position – with a preference for alien heritage.”

There were some murmurs around the room at the mention of a preference for aliens, but when no one actually spoke up, Lena ended the meeting.


	2. Alien Relations

Jess caught up to Lena Luthor as she got in the elevator, and they went over the rest of the CEO’s schedule before lunch – she had a stack of interviews for the new Alien Relations position. Normally hiring and interviews were tasks that Lena delegated to someone else – she had entire departments just in charge of staffing changes – but this had potentially company-wide ramifications and so demanded her personal involvement.

They stepped out of the elevator onto the top floor, and Lena noticed that some of the interviewees had arrived early. Jess’ replacement, Sana Girgis – for when Jess had to attend something with Lena but they wanted to have someone at the desk anyway – had set them up in the secondary conference room with some snacks and a portable coffee dispenser. Lena nodded in approval at Sana and she made her way with Jess to the back conference room where the interviews would actually take place. They didn’t pause to check in with Sana – the stand-in assistant had already passed to Jess anything worthy of note via message while they were in the Thank Supergirl meeting.

Lena strolled in and sat down so they could start the meeting, Jess grabbing a drink for each of them. There were already five people seated around the conference table so the addition of two more made this a very large interview panel but Lena wanted to a lot of feedback on this very important hire. The CEO looked down at list on her tablet – their first interviewee was J’na of a planet called Talov II.

He was led in and sat down, greeting those around the table with low soothing tones. His bearing was also confident yet professional. Lena immediately approved of him. The man had dark skin, but not so dark that he couldn't pass as human – the only tell he had that he was an alien was his ears, which came up to points.

“Am I pronouncing this right – J’na of Talov II?” her hiring manager Laurent Tessier asked. At the alien man's nod, Laurent continued, asking him questions about his community service background. “I understand you started an organization for alien relations here in National City?”

“I didn’t start it, no, but I helped it go public. It had previously been operating unofficially for years.” J’na paused as if considering his words. “Aliens have been around for a long time on Earth, much longer than most humans realize. We have just been pushed more into the limelight due to advances in Earth technology and with the popularity of Superman and now Supergirl.” He smiled then. “In older eras, aliens that couldn’t pass as human lived away from human settlements, and locals believed them to be supernatural or magical beings.”

Ashley Walsh, an exec from Legal – just to make sure everything in the meetings was above board – raised her eyebrows at this, and asked for clarification.

J'na smiled, answering, “Think like fairytales and mythology – trolls, goblins, angels, fae. Not all mythical creatures are based on aliens, but there are quite a few. There are even some records from aliens who were alive at that time that attest to the sources of the myths, although that is of course very rare.”

Lena was surprised despite herself. Of course, on further thinking it would make sense that aliens being on Earth hadn’t only started recently – and J’na confirmed that alien visitors and refugees had increased in modern times, choosing to come here once Earth technology reached a certain threshold. She was learning a lot from this interview that she hadn’t thought she would.

The other members of the panel questioned the alien on his experiences working with recent alien refugees, an alien legal defense fund, and with law enforcement. Finally, Laurent turned the questions over to Lena.

“Mr. … ah, do you have a surname or other honorific at all? Or would you prefer we just use J’na?” She paused a moment to clear her throat. “I’m not sure if you’re used to standard office practices, but we use often formal addresses as a form of respect, and usually that means Mr./Ms. followed by a last or family name. First names are primarily used in the office for close associates or friends."

"My name includes my family name already, but it is difficult for human mouths to pronounce," J'na said in his solemn slow tones. "So you may call me J'na."

Lena nodded, very businesslike. "Very well, Mr. J'na. I do have a couple questions for you, but first I would like to ask if you have any questions for me." She paused for a beat. "I know my family has a history of being ... less than friendly with aliens, so I would like you to ask me what you would need to know before you would be able to work with a Luthor."

Jess shifted uncomfortably next to her – Lena knew that her assistant was a bit protective about the youngest Luthor's past with her family and would sometimes even get a little aggressive about it – but thankfully the assistant didn't say anything.

J'na was silent for a few moments, before leaning back into his chair slightly. "Lena Luthor, the youngest of the family name," he intoned. "It is true about your family, but we aliens have seen that you are trying to distance yourself from their actions." J'na leaned forward again, resuming his former upright position. "I don't have anything I need to ask you."

"Alright," Lena said, "then for my question – why are you applying for this job? Why do you want to help represent L-Corp in the public sphere?"

The alien hummed in thought. "You ask hard questions, Lena Luthor," J'na said in his slow tones. At Jess' pointed glare, the man corrected himself. "I mean, Ms. Luthor." He smiled slightly at Jess in an offer of peace, and then turned back to Lena.

He sighed. "Honestly? There aren't many companies that would openly hire aliens, and it's not always easy to hide these," he said, tapping his ears. "Also, I've done some research into L-Corp since you took over as CEO, and I think I can see that you are trying to help us, so in turn, I would like to help you. Also, the benefits package is rather nice." He grinned.

Lena's eyes crinkled with amusement. "Well, I'm glad you like it." She turned back to her hiring manager. "That's all for me, Laurent."

Mr. Tessier nodded, and then with a quick review of the panel members, he thanked J'na for his time, and that they would be in contact with him over the next week. They all shook hands around the table.

There were a few other aliens to interview, but none of them seemed outwardly as likeable as J'na or had as much experience.

The final interviewee for the morning was a woman named Torine Kallox, who didn't seem to have referenced her planet. Lena privately wondered if that was normal among aliens, or if it was something that differed with each group. She was led into the room, and the first thing that Lena noticed was that her skin was a faded light green – a color not seen on human skin, although it was only slightly darker that the skin color when a white person was ill.

The next thing Lena noticed was that Ms. Kallox was extremely nervous – the poor woman tripped twice just trying to pull out the chair to sit down. Lena's heart immediately went out to her.

"Wait," she said, holding out a hand. Torine froze, one hand on the back of the chair. "Just take a bit to breathe, ok?" Torine nodded shakily, chest pumping visible and nostrils flaring. Lena wanted to shake her head – this probably wasn't helping calm the poor alien.

"Is there a place you go when you're having a bad day and you just want to calm down?" Lena asked, and Torine blinked uncertainly. "Can you tell me what it's like, or describe it?"

"Uh, uh," started Ms. Kallox, "there's a place on my homeworld I used to go to." When Lena nodded, Torine continued. "It's high up over a network of canyons, and someone built a tower there a long time ago. Nothing can grow there – it's all rock. But if you go up there at a certain time of day, when the winds are just right, you can hear the voices of all the canyons singing." When she finished talking, the light green alien was smiling slightly.

"That sounds like a lovely place," Lena said, smiling in return. "Now, maybe it's easier now to try sitting down?"

Torine nodded, still a little jerkily, but much better than before. She pulled out the chair and sat down in one try this time.

Lena smiled and turned to Laurent to start the meeting. He blinked a momentary 'what me?' face at the CEO before recollecting himself to a professional demeanor. He went over the usual parts of the interview – checking pronunciation and experience, like he'd done for the others – but then he got down to a section that he didn't understand.

"I see you've labeled this section of your CV 'abilities', but I'm not sure what you mean here." He adjusted his glasses, looking at the printed page in front of him. "You've got here something about dietary concerns? And a line that simply says 'charm'?" He lifted his eyes up to look at the alien. "What are those?"

"Oh, uh uh," Ms. Kallox started, sounding nervous. "I wanted to put a section that lists what my uh, alien abilities are. You know," she looked around the table, "what makes my species different from humans."

"Ah alright," Laurent said, features smoothing. "And what are you dietary concerns?"

"My species is carnivorous, so I need to eat meat or uh," she glanced around nervously, "insects."

Laurent blinked. "Well, I don't think that would be a problem." Suddenly a thought occurred to him. "Unless ... it doesn't have to be alive still, does it?" A collective shudder ran around the table.

"Oh! No no, no-no-no, it doesn't have to be alive. Dead is fine. Cooked is fine," she replied hurriedly, waving her hands in negation.

"Oh," Laurent said in relief. "I don't think that'll be a problem then." He looked down at the next item. "And charm?"

The corner of Lena's mouth twitched upward – she didn't think that's what the alien meant, but the CEO found Torine's clumsiness endearing. Admittedly that could be because the CEO found a certain blonde reporter's awkwardness endearing. Maybe Lena had a type?

The alien in front of her seemed uneasy at the question, even though she had to know it was coming and had even put it openly on her CV. "Well," she started, shifting in her seat, "I uh, have an ability to make people like me?" She licked her lips and looked around the table, seeing uncomprehending faces. "It's uh, a pheremone, and it seems to work on every species my kind has encountered."

Lena's eyebrows lifted, thinking about the ramifications. That would be an incredibly powerful ability for a PR representative or business person, although only useful with in-person interactions. "Are you using it now?" she asked.

Torine instantly shook her head emphatically. "No! I try not to use it – I find that when people find out I've been using it they get upset at me about it."

"So people can tell when you using it?"

"Uh, yes?" Torine said, looking a bit uncertain. "I mean, other people notice the expression change on that person's face – a human friend of mine once called it a 'dopey expression'." Torine crinkled her forehead at that, as if she didn't really understand that term. "And of course you notice later that you fell a bit drunk, like your head has gone all fuzzy." She waved a hand next to her ear as if gesturing the fuzziness.

"Well, that's good to know," Lena said calmly. She probably wouldn't want that ability to be used in any case, but as she said, it was good to know that Ms. Kallox was capable of it.

The rest of the interview went normally, and when Lena asked her question about why Torine wanted to represent L-Corp, the alien shifted nervously in her seat again.

"Uh, well, uh," she said, "I need a job? So, I uh, applied."

Lena nodded in understanding – she could imagine that alien with this skin tone might have trouble getting and keeping a job, and if she had tried and failed or had gotten fired multiple times previously that probably would explain Ms. Kallox's nervousness in this interview.

They said their thanks and ended the interview, then clustered around the end of the table to go over the candidates.

Laurent pulled out his notes and looked up around the table to start talking when he noticed that Lena was still staring after the last interviewee.

"Ms. Luthor, no," he pleaded. "She's not a good match for--"

"--for this position, I know," she finished for him, pulling her attention and eyes back to the meeting. "But she does need a job. Maybe she can be someone's assistant or something."

Jess tensed at that.

"Jess, I'm not getting rid of you, and you wouldn't have to train her," she smiled wryly at her assistant. "I'm thinking we could maybe suggest a position in a lower division, like assistant to an undermanager in PR or Legal, something that wouldn't make her so nervous but also would work to her strengths."

Jess nodded, all business. "I'll send an email to the appropriate hiring manager, Ms. Luthor. I'm sure we can find something."

"Thank you, Jess."

Going around the table, the consensus was that J'na was hands-down the best candidate, but just in case one of the others was selected as a backup candidate should J'na decline their offer. The other candidates were retained in a folder that could potentially be hires under the Alien Relations position, if the board approved expanding it. So far, just the Alien Relations position was open – they didn't have any major projects for the new position just because they'd never had one before, so they would have to play it by ear until they learned what they needed.

Lena had her hiring managers drafted a pay offer based on their internal docs and the level of the proposed position, then called it a day.

\----

The follow-up interview with J'na was scheduled for the very next morning, and the panel reconvened in the conference room again. When J'na was brought in, this time Lena started the interview.

"I'm glad we were able to schedule your second interview on such short notice. Thank you for accommodating us."

He waved away the concern with a smile.

"Today might be rather short, as I really only had one topic I wanted to bring up." Lena set the papers aside and leaned forward. "We were very impressed with your experience and abilities and think you would be an excellent candidate for this position. However, I like to try and be intersectional with minority groups when I can, and seeing as you are a male candidate, I would like to ask you about whether misogyny and representation of women is an issue among the alien community." Lena raised her eyebrows in emphasis. "We don't want to be solving one problem to make another worse."

"Are you saying ...," J'na started, looking a bit confused.

"I'm saying I had wanted to hire a woman for this position," Lena stated bluntly.

Ashley from Legal made a strangled noise at that, but Lena waved her to silence.

Unaccountably, J'na smiled at this. "Well, if that's a problem," he started, and then he inhaled and seemed to hold his breath for a moment.

Lena and everyone else around the table gaped – that hadn't been the response the CEO was expecting. After a second, they noticed something was changing with the alien's body – Lena started when she realized that he was changing shape before their eyes.

Finally, the alien exhaled, and smiled again. "Is that better?" J'na asked. The alien's voice seemed to be a slightly higher pitch now, but was still rather deep and soothing.

"Are you ... did you ...," Lena started to say.

J'na smiled. "My species are hermaphrodites – we can switch between genders," he- no, she said. "I believe there are some species that can do that on Earth. Frogs, I believe?"

To everyone's surprise, it was Jess that responded to that. "And some species of fish and lizards, too," she said. "Also, some humans prefer to not use gender distinctions or will switch between them."

"Well," J'na said, smiling at the panel again, "did that answer that question?"

"Yes, I believe it does," Lena said, still sounding just a touch dazed. She shook herself and asked around the table if there was anything else. When no one else had any objections, she nodded to Laurent, who formally presented J'na with her offer package.

"The starting pay and benefits are all based on our internal pay schedule, so those are unfortunately non-negotiable, but other things on the offer are, for example the starting date," Mr. Tessier said.

J'na looked at the date and furrowed her brow slightly. "This is almost a full month from now," she intoned in her still rather deep voice as she tapped on the starting date on the page.

"Well, we could get you in as early as Monday next week if you're eager to start earlier," Laurent suggested, raising his eyebrows, "but we'd have to get your signature on it by today probably, because that's only four days from now."

"That's too fast," Lena said, frowning. "You should never make a business decision without sleeping on it first." She turned to J'na. "If you want to start on Monday then you can still sign by tomorrow close of business."

Laurent grimaced, but nodded. "Yeah, we can do it."

"However, I understand that this is a big decision that might require some consideration so if you wanted to start earlier than the proposed starting date on your offer letter but still have time to think about it, maybe confer with friends and family, you could sign the offer on Monday next week and still be able to start by Weds or Thurs." Lena pointed at the offer package in the alien's hands. "The only date you need to worry about is the two week expiration on this offer – exceed that and we'll go to the next candidate on our list. Otherwise, just ask and we'll try to work something out."

They went back and forth with a couple more questions, but no other major questions came up. Laurent passed J'na the contact information for the PR division managers and leads, who she would be working directly with if she accepted the offer. Finally, they stood up and shook hands.

The next morning, Jess walked into Lena's office with the CEO's coffee and the news that J'na had accepted the offer package with a start date on Monday. The youngest Luthor grinned inwardly – that happened to be the minimum time that Lena had recommended to consider an offer.


	3. Enter Supergirl

"Ms. Luthor," Jess' voice came through the intercom.

"Yes?"

"Ms. Danvers is here with lunch."

"Send her in Jess," Lena said, eagerly standing up from her desk.

The blonde strode in through the door almost before the CEO finished walking around her desk, and Lena figured that the CatCo reporter must have been waiting by the door and had come through as soon as Lena had said yes. Kara immediately went to hug her, even before setting anything down, and Lena sank into the embrace with a laugh – it had been a couple days since Lena had been able to get a free lunch, and judging from the enthusiasm of the hug it seemed Kara had missed her as much as Lena had missed the blonde.

They sat down and started eating, Kara wolfing down a lunch than was even larger than normal for her. When Lena went to question that, Kara ducked her head sheepishly.

"I uh, had a light breakfast, but mostly because this has to be a working lunch." The reporter grimaced. "Snapper's been hounding me and the only way I could get a long enough break to see you was if I got your statement on the new L-Corp alien representative."

Lena laughed. "Well, I have to ask for your help to get in touch with Supergirl again, so I guess this can be a working lunch for both of us."

"Supergirl?" Kara repeated almost unintelligibly around a mouth full of food.

"Ok, I'll go first and give you the rundown on this so you can keep eating," she smirked. As she spoke, she got up and went over to the sidetable to get herself a drink. "So, I wanted to thank Supergirl for all times she's saved my life and the lives of L-Corp employees. I talked about it with my PR manager and team leads, we came to the decision to have L-Corp host a charity event in Supergirl's name. You want anything?" When Kara declined, Lena returned to the couch with her drink.

"We have a list of alien-supporting or alien-focused charities that we want to run by Supergirl to see if she approves of them, and then we of course have to pick a day that works, but hopefully if you can get me in contact with her we can get that all worked out." Lena paused and tilted her head thoughtfully. "Does it bother you that I ask you about Supergirl stuff? If there's a better person to go through then I could do that."

Kara shook her head. "No, I don't mind," she said around a bite of food, "although if you ever can't get a hold of me and need to talk to Supergirl, then you can also talk to James."

"James ... as in James Olsen? The acting CEO of CatCo?"

The CatCo reporter nodded. "Yeah, you know he's good friends with Superman, right? So he knows Supergirl that way, through her cousin."

"Oh ok, yeah I think I heard something about that." Lena chuckled. "Alright, I'll have him be my secondary Supergirl contact then."

Lena blinked then, remembering something. "Oh, and by the way, none of that is on the record yet, about the Supergirl benefit – we need to get Supergirl's approval first and then we'll have to release a press statement, and _then_ you can ask me about it."

Kara nodded, swallowing the last mouthful of her lunch.

Lena grinned. "All ready for your turn there, Ms. Danvers, CatCo Reporter?"

In answer, Kara swiftly pulled out her pen and notepad, crossing her legs and assuming what she felt was a very reporter-y pose. Lena giggled – which was something that Lena only did rarely, and Kara cherished every time she managed to get the CEO to relax enough to do it.

"So," Kara started, "L-Corp has hired a new alien representative?"

"The official title is Alien Relations Manager, and he- I mean, she'll be working as part of our PR department."

"She, then?" Kara asked, scribbling down notes.

"Errr, yes?" Lena crinkled her brow. "Apparently her species are hermaphrodites, but she assumed a more female appearance when we hired her." The CEO frowned. "Actually, can we not put that on the record? I don't want to speak for her, so maybe it would be best if you asked her directly how she'd like to be referred to in the article."

Kara nodded and promptly put a line through that part of her notes. "Done." She looked up at Lena. "So this Alien Relations Manager is supposed to do what exactly?"

"Her job is in general to make sure L-Corp doesn't put its foot in its mouth when it comes to alien issues, just like you'd want to have for other minority groups." She tilted her head slightly to one side. "That's admittedly a tall order for just one person – we're a very large company – but we have to start somewhere and we're still trying to feel out the number of personnel we'll need."

"And when you say 'put its foot in its mouth', what do you mean?"

"Well," Lena said slowly, drawing out the sound as she considered the question, "remember the alien detector prototype I showed you? And you mentioned that it could be considered anti-alien? Well, that's something that the researchers probably never considered, and I hadn't thought about it either until you mentioned it, but if we had someone dedicated to that task? Someone who could look at the big picture of our research projects? That would be invaluable."

Lena paused for a bit to let Kara finish writing. When the reporter's pen stopped moving and she looked up, the CEO continued.

"L-Corp unfortunately has a history of anti-alien sentiments and research, and we feel that in order to turn the company around, we need to have some experts on hand within the company to help guide us."

Kara scribbled some more notes down, shooting a quick smile at the CEO. "That's a really beautiful sentiment. You really are trying to do better."

Lena gave Kara a full, relieved smile at that – and Kara's heart did a strange swoop in her chest at the sight. "Thank you, Kara. You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear someone say that."

They stayed like that for a moment – smiling at each other. Just then, the intercom beeped.

Lena glanced up at the clock – it was already 2pm – and she push the button to answer. "Just a minute Jess." She turned to Kara. "Do you have a few minutes to talk to the new Alien Relations Manager? Because that's her, she's my next appointment."

"Like ... a full interview?" Kara asked, blinking.

"Maybe not a _full_ interview – I have other things to get to – but if you don't have enough time right now then you can schedule another time to meet directly with her. I mean," Lena said, smirking at Kara and giving her a wink, "this is my way of cheating and getting to spend more time with you."

The reporter's face split into one of her trademarked radiant smiles. "Well, in that case, how can I say no?"

Lena, her heart racing a bit faster from the smile, made them at least clean up their food before telling Jess to send J'na in. Once the alien stepped into her office and shut the door, Lena made the introductions.

"Before we have our meeting, this is Kara Danvers, a reporter with CatCo magazine. If you don't mind answering, I think she has a few questions to ask you directly."

"It's a pleasure," J'na said in her deep slow tones, smiling warmly. "I'm J'na of Talov II."

Kara smiled brightly and shook the woman's hand. She could see why Lena had hired her – the alien had a friendly but calming presence, which would no doubt be necessary if there were ever a serious disagreement with the alien community.

Once they were all seated, J'na actually started off first.

"I'm only on my second day, so I might not be able to answer all your questions if it's about L-Corp, but I'll do my best."

"Well, I have the best L-Corp resource right here," Kara replied, smiling and gesturing to Lena, "so between the two of you I'm sure we can figure it out."

Kara started out asking J'na for a brief personal history, and then asked her why she had chosen to work with L-Corp as an alien.

J'na smirked. "Well," she intoned, "that's the same question Ms. Luthor asked me in the interview, so I'll give you the same answer I gave her."

As the alien answered her question, Kara scribbled furiously in her pad. When she finished writing, she asked, "And what's an example of a task you've done so far in your new job."

Laughing, J'na answered, "So far? Filling out paperwork."

Kara grinned.

Lena cleared her throat. "Actually, the first thing J'na's going to do in her official job capacity is going to be reviewing the plans and announcements for the Supergirl benefit with me – but since that's not official yet it's still off the record, sooo ... why don't we say, reviewing future L-Corp announcements? I'd also like to see if we couldn't get some other higher-profile aliens invited as guests, but we'll have to see what we can do." She shrugged. "Or you can go with J'na's answer of filling out paperwork."

"Check back in next week and I'm sure I'll have more," J'na added in deep tones.

"Alright," Kara said, writing down the last points. "I should be good with all this – hopefully it'll make Snapper happy." Her grimace said she didn't think so, but she packed up her things all the same.

"I'll walk you out to the elevator," Lena said, wanting to be able to give Kara a more personal goodbye.

As they walked past Jess' ever-present watchful eye – well, actually it wouldn't be more personal out here, Lena corrected herself – the CEO smiled at Kara. "I'm sorry it had to be a working lunch, but I'll take what I can get I guess."

Kara blushed in that cute way she had. "Maybe we could do dinner later? Or do lunch over the weekend instead?"

"I'd like that," Lena replied, smiling. "I let you know what I can free up, although I'm gonna be honest – I'll be really lucky if I can get out of here before 9pm any night this week. We have so many new initiatives starting all at once that I've been swamped." The CEO laughed at herself. "I guess I got a bit overzealous in my planning. I'll have to work more on pacing myself."

"Yes," Kara said, looking at Lena with concern, "you have to try and take care of yourself – overworking yourself isn't healthy."

"No, it's not – although I could say the same for you, Miss I-Can't-Even-Get-Free-For-Lunch," the youngest Luthor retorted with a mock stern expression. Then she winked.

Kara blushed extremely bright red – Lena winking at her made her insides flip in all sorts of good ways. The elevator dinged open and the reporter quickly pulled Lena in for a hug, somewhat startling the CEO before Lena wrapped her arms around Kara too.

They held the hug for as long as they could before the doors of the elevator started to close again – Kara dashed inside and waved as the doors closed behind her. Lena turned around to walk past Jess – who was studiously looking over her scheduling without once looking up in a way that told the CEO that she'd been watching the pair the whole time – and through her open office door, closing it behind her.

\----

She and J'na got straight to work, pulling out all the information on the Supergirl benefit charities so the new alien relations manager could review them. The alien wanted to know how the charities spent their money supposedly on aliens, and Lena pulled up the detailed vetting files her staff had compiled for each one.

Since Lena and her very human staff hadn't really had any inside knowledge into alien support networks or basic needs, they had mostly had to take all the charities' claims at face value. With J'na helping though, the CEO could find out exactly what was real help and what was just on paper.

With a couple hours of work, they managed to "sift the wheat from the chaff" as Lena put it – although she'd had to explain what that saying meant to J'na. The CEO was saddened, but sadly not so surprised, to see that the biggest charities that claimed to help aliens were only helping symbolically, and the charities that were doing the good work were small and underfunded. Well, L-Corp was about to rectify that, if Lena had anything to say about it.

That done, they moved onto venues that could potentially have anti-alien associations, and J'na steered her away from one where the owner had actually been an open supporter of her brother Lex.

After a few minutes looking at party plans and possible guest alien attendees, J'na looked up from the paper she was reading and frowned.

"Ms. Luthor," she started in her deep soothing voice, "why aren't we discussing this with Supergirl? Seeing as the benefit is for her."

"We will. I've asked to set up a meeting with her later, but we should try to get this as finished as we can before then because I don't think Supergirl would really like digging into the gory details of setting up an event. She's probably got a lot on her plate with protecting the city, and what if she has a day job – I mean, a job that she does when she's not Supergirl?" Lena shook her head. "It's too much work to pile on her shoulders – we're doing this to thank her, not give her more work."

J'na hummed, but still looked a bit confused. She glanced towards the door to the office, and then back at her boss.

"But, don't you ... aren't you friends with Supergirl? I mean, you could just ask her, rather than speculate."

Lena's eyebrows jumped up in surprise. "Friends? I don't know, I think I would say I have a more professional relationship with Supergirl. I haven't actually had all that many conversations with the Girl of Steel, and almost never outside of emergency situations." The CEO was a bit confused now and showed it on her face – it felt almost like the two of them were speaking about entirely different things, like both sides of the conversation somehow didn't line up and Lena couldn't put her finger on why. "J'na," she started, "what are you trying to get at? I think I'm missing something here."

J'na sat there without speaking for a moment, before she looked up at Lena. "Ms. Luthor ... don't you ... know who Supergirl is? Her human name, I mean, without the suit."

The youngest Luthor's eyebrows jumped back up again, this time higher, and she leaned back in her seat. "No," she said, honestly surprised. "Do you? Wait," she interrupted quickly, holding up a hand to preemptively stop anything the alien might say, "I'm not asking you to tell me, so don't do that. But ... if you do know, then you should probably keep that information a closely guarded secret and not let anyone else know that you know Supergirl's identity. I can't imagine that she wants other people to find it if she's hiding herself."

Lena shuffled the papers in front of her for a bit, then looked back up. "How were you able to tell?" she asked, curious.

J'na smiled widely. "Ms. Luthor," she intoned, "there are many other senses than sight, like smell for example." She tapped the side of her nose with a conspiratorial grin.

Lena blinked, then chuckled. "Well, I suppose we humans do rely a bit too much on our eyes, don't we?" she asked rhetorically.

The two drafted up some basic ideas to follow later for the charity planning, to be handed off to a different team to fully vet it.

"Alright, I just have some other things to go over that I would like your input on – we want to expand into the area of alien biomed, but we don't have a lot of leads. Do you have contacts that are researchers or doctors in alien medicine or physiology?" Lena asked, handing over some documents listing specific research areas of interest. "Just in case I need to outright state it, I realize that anyone with a lot of knowledge in this area is most likely going to be alien and that is both expected and welcomed."

"Well, alien or government." At Lena's raised brow, J'na clarified. "There are researchers in this area that work in government agencies, often in secret. You've heard of CADMUS, I presume?"

Lena winced.

"Yes, exactly." J'na chuckled darkly. "Project CADMUS used to be a government funded project until it went rogue. Government agencies or projects like that have both research and researchers."

The CEO felt sick. Every time she wanted to do something good, it felt like she was pushed back by her family's history of evil – sometimes she felt like she couldn't escape. Lena rubbed her forehead tiredly.

"I mean, I could try to find out where my mother hid her research – you know she was the head of CADMUS, right? – but just ... the very rumor of that ever getting out would be the death knell for L-Corp." She brought her hand down and looked at J'na. "And I don't even know if we would find anything we would want to use out of that. I most definitely wouldn't trust any researchers that had worked with her." Lena turned and paced to the window.

Abruptly the CEO turned, struck by inspiration. "Well, there is one thing. Not ... my mother's work," she swallowed, then continued, "but ... there's an agency that Supergirl works for. Perhaps we can see what contacts they can offer us. I can ask her when I meet with her about the charity benefit. Surely there might be some researchers who are ready to move from shadowy government agency to the private sector?" Lena walked over to her desk and scribbled something down. "And they probably wouldn't share tech, but medical information about aliens that could be the foundation for further research might be possible."

J'na cleared her throat. "Generally that agency confiscates alien tech that it finds, but there are some uses that they allow – I believe alien specific medicine and treatment is one of them."

Lena hummed in thought. "So, we should contact the alien clinic then, see if we can't find some doctors who want to do some research or are maybe looking for funding."

The new AR manager nodded, and they started making a contacts list to follow up with.

\----

At the soft sound of boots touching down on her balcony, Lena stopped typing and turned around.

"Supergirl," she greeted, and stood up.

"Hi L- Ms. Luthor," the blonde hero said. "I heard you wanted to meet with me?"

Lena nodded, and gestured to the couch. She leaned over to the intercom and buzzed Jess. "Hold everything for now Jess. I've got a meeting with Supergirl." After her assistant's acknowledgment, the CEO made her way over to the couch and sat down.

"I'm surprised you're still working this late," Supergirl started, "and your assistant, too."

"She sometimes refuses to leave until I do, so I put a limit at 10pm for tonight for the both of us." Lena sighed. "I know that it's better to leave earlier, but with how much we have to do right now, it's hard to remember that."

"Your work isn't going anywhere – it'll still be there tomorrow. And it's not like there are lives depending on whether you get it done one day instead of the next."

"Well, that's not strictly true of our medical research division," she said, rubbing her forehead tiredly, "but let's ignore that for now – I had something important to talk to you about." Lena put her hands down in her lap and looked expectantly at the caped hero sitting beside her. "You have saved my life almost more times than I can count, and you've saved the employees and my company as well, and so I got my teams together to come up with a way to express our gratitude."

"Ms. Luthor," Supergirl started, blushing slightly, "there are no thanks needed, I-"

Lena held up a hand to stop the hero. "Maybe they aren't needed, but we want to say them anyway." She put her hand back down into your lap. "The question becomes then: what do you give the hero who has everything?" The CEO grinned at her own joke. "You're not exactly the normal sort of National City resident, and we wanted to give you something that would help you in your duties. Sadly that takes months to most likely years of research, so instead we wanted to help the people of National City in your honor, since you spend so much of your time doing that, in the form of a charity fundraising event."

"I ... wow, I ...," the hero started.

Lena picked up the packet off the coffee table in front of them and handed it to Supergirl. "This is a list of pre-vetted charities that we thought might be good suggestions of charities to benefit from the fundraiser – so you don't have to do all the legwork yourself. Each one has a description of what kind of work the charity does and their organizational structure."

The hero started scanning the pages of the document in her hands as Lena spoke.

"You'll notice that they're all alien or alien-supporting charities – we know you help all the people of National City, alien or human, but given L-Corp's and my family's past transgressions, we thought that would be an area of more need currently. Not many people specifically give to alien charities."

Supergirl flipped through a couple more pages before saying, "Wow ... Lena, this is a lot."

Lena winced a little. "Well, I definitely didn't want to give you more work. I know you're busy already, so ... maybe if you don't want to pour through all that yourself, you could ask for help from the agency you work with?" Lena finished with a hopeful tone in her voice, and the super looked up at her. "I just wanted to give you some details about what exactly we wanted to do before asking for your permission to go ahead with this event."

The hero blinked. "You're asking my permission to do a charity event?" she asked, a bit incredulously.

The corner of the CEO's mouth quirked upwards into a half-smile. "Well, I'm certainly not going to ask other people to give money at an event with your name on it without asking for your permission, no." Her eyes crinkled in amusement.

Supergirl's mouth made a silent 'oh' shape. "Yeah ok, I can see how that would make sense – wait, how are you going to put my name on it?"

Lena pointed to the top of the first page.

"'Thank You Supergirl Official Charity Fundraiser, sponsored by L-Corp'," the hero read aloud. "Ok that's fine." She flipped the book closed and held it out to Lena.

The CEO blinked. "That's it? You don't want to look at it further?"

"No – I trust you." Supergirl said, folding her arms casually.

"Well, thank you for the vote of confidence." Lena said, smiling at Supergirl. "Although this copy is for you, in case you have questions at any point later." She pushed the papers back towards the superhero. "I'm sure your government agency friends will have serious questions about it later, so you should keep it."

The hero grimaced. "Yeah, you're probably right," she said as she picked up the document packet with a sigh.

Lena waited a beat to see if Supergirl had anything else to say. "Well, if that's everything for the charity event, I have something else I wanted to asked," she said, leaning towards the hero. "We're trying to add alien treatments and medicine to the current research and development in our biomed division, and I'd like to know if your agency knows anyone who might be willing to do research with us or that would could be partners with."

The hero blinked but didn't immediately say anything, so Lena forged ahead, worried that she might be taken the wrong way before she could explain fully.

"We do a lot of R&D with human-based medicine and treatments, but none for other species, and it's rather hard to find anyone doing current research. Usually those people get hired by the government, so I thought your agency might be able to put me in contact with someone at your agency or might be able to give us contacts outside of that agency."

Supergirl frowned in thought. "That might be possible. I'll see what I can do and get back to you on that."

Lena smiled. "Perfect, that's all I'm asking." She looked up at the clock then – 9:45pm.

"Well," Supergirl said cheerily as she too glanced at the time, clapping her hands against her thighs once and standing up. "Looks like it's time to go home!"

The CEO frowned. "There's still fifteen minutes."

"Oh, come on," the hero said, putting her hands on her hips and looking stern. "How much work are you really going to get done in fifteen minutes?"

"Quite a lot, I'll have you know."

Supergirl harrumphed. "I'd still feel better if you went home now." Suddenly the hero brightened and she strode towards the door, knocking on it quickly before opening it and stick her head out of Lena's office.

"Supergirl, what are you doing?" came Lena's question behind her.

Jess looked at the superhero incredulously from her desk.

"Hi!" the hero said brightly, looking at Jess.

"Uh, Supergirl," the assistant started, "you do realize you don't have to knock on the door when you're _leaving_ a room, right?"

Supergirl ignored the question and walked up to Jess' desk. "Jess – you're Jess, right? Ms. Luthor's assistant?" At the other woman's nod, she continued. "Well, we just finished our meeting, and I know you and Ms. Luthor had previously decided to work until 10pm, but how would you feel about finishing 15 minutes early tonight?" she asked with a tilted of her head.

The L-Corp assistant promptly started putting papers away, saying, "I'll just close this up right now."

"Jess!" Lena protested, now standing in the doorway to her office. She saw two nearly identical innocent smiles aimed at her as both Jess and Supergirl turned towards her. "Ugh, fine," she said, tilting her head back in defeat. "I guess I'll close everything down." She strode back in her office.

Supergirl grinned triumphantly at Jess and held up a hand in unspoken request for a high five from the assistant, who gave it with a wry smile.

Jess gave the hero an assessing look, then nodded to herself. "Hmm, I guess you're alright."

The superhero spluttered. "Just alright??"

The assistant just hummed noncommittally and stood up, putting her bag over her shoulder. Lena stepped out of her office, closing and locking the door behind her.

"Supergirl?" Lena said, stepping over to them. "You forgot your packet."

"Oh. Right," the hero said, accepting it.

All three women walked over to the elevator together. Supergirl stretched her arms out with a monstrous yawn. When she finished, both the business women were smirking at her, causing the hero to shrug and smile sheepishly.

"Long day, Supergirl?" Lena asked, voice full of amusement.

"Well, heh," she stuttered, rubbing the back of her head self-consciously. "I just hope there are no more emergencies in the middle of the night tonight."

Both the other woman winced. The elevator doors opened and they all got in.

Lena turned to the hero, concerned. "Do you need a ride home? It's probably not as fast as flying, but ...."

"Oh no, I'm not so tired that I can't fly, and if I were I definitely wouldn't still be conscious," Supergirl said laughing. "Flying's pretty easy actually." Both the human women stared at her with unreadable expressions. "What?" the hero asked, looking anxious.

Jess shook her head, muttering, "I wish _I_ could just fly home."

Lena replied, in similar tones, "Yeah, I'll have to see what I can get added to the R&D projects."


	4. Dr. Danvers here to see you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, we haven't even gotten to the proposal yet, how did the intro get to be so long??  
> \----

Lena sat at her desk flipping through project reviews and answering emails. They'd finally gotten the ok to start further planning for their charity event – though Supergirl still hadn't gotten back to them on a specific date yet – and the preliminary work could start, which would include coordinating with each of the selected charities and finding potential venue availabilities.

The intercom buzzed, and Lena looked up at the clock, frowning. Kara had just left, and she didn't have any other appointments scheduled for right now. "Yes, Jess?"

"An Agent Danvers here to see you from the FBI."

Lena blinked in surprise. Kara's sister? "Send her in, Jess, thank you."

Sure enough, Alex Danvers walked through the door. The trim agent walked right up to her desk and stood, smooth and efficient with no extra motion wasted. Lena couldn't help but notice how much different the two sisters were in their outward demeanor.

"Can I help you, Agent Danvers?" she inquired politely. She gestured to one of the chairs in front of her desk.

Alex grunted and waved off the offer of a seat. "You asked to see me."

Lena's eyebrows lifted. "I did?" She blinked. "Is this about the Supergirl charity event or is this about the biomedical research?"

"I'm assuming it's about the biomed research, since that's what I do."

"An FBI agent and a biomedical researcher? You are quite talented Agent Danvers."

"And a doctor," she stated, voice completely neutral. Lena could tell the woman wasn't bragging, just passing on information.

"Well, I'll get right to it then," Lena said, clearing her throat and leaning forward to put her elbows on her desk. "I'm looking to add alien physiology and treatment to our current biomedical research portfolio, and I'd like to ask if you have any contacts in that area, either individual researchers, teams, or private companies to either partner with or possibly acquire." She smiled, adding, "I'm assuming you yourself aren't looking for a new job, otherwise I'd offer."

Alex snorted. "No, I'm not – no offense."

"None taken."

The agent looked at her for a beat or two. "That's it?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"That's it," the CEO confirmed, nodding.

"Alright," Alex said, standing up straighter, "I'll let you know." With that the agent nodded at Lena and then turned on her heel and strode out.

After the door had shut, Lena said, to herself in the empty room, "Well, it was worth a shot." She went back to her work. One good thing about soldiers – they didn't waste time with pleasantries and just got the job done.

\----

A few days later, Lena found herself buried in paperwork for the Supergirl benefit, which they finally had an official date for. There were _so_ many small details that had to be approved of, and even with Jess and a handful of her event staff it was overwhelming all her layers of delegation. The CEO was starting to seriously regret demanding to be included on this stuff, but she was very intent on making sure this went off well.

It was _Supergirl_. Lena literally owed the woman her life – she didn't really feel like she could delegate it.

So when the intercom buzzed on her desk, Lena was a little bit irritated. She thought she'd told Jess to reschedule everything for the rest of the day. "Yes?"

"Dr. Danvers here to see you."

Lena rolled her eyes and grunted an acknowledgement, realizing that she probably couldn't tell Kara's sister to go away and not bother her. She looked back down at her papers, scribbling some notes in the margins about exactly what she wanted from the caterers.

When the door opened, the CEO grumbled, without looking up, "I thought you said you didn't want a new job, Alex."

A throat cleared, the sound a bit amused, and Lena looked up ... to see someone who was most definitely _not_ Alex Danvers. Standing there was an older woman, probably in her fifties or early sixties, dressed in a blazer and slacks. Lena had no idea who she was other than the familiar name, and blinked. The woman smiled and walked up to the CEO's desk.

"I'm sorry to drop in without an appointment," she said smoothly, extending a hand over the desk. Lena shook it automatically, her brain still scrambling to catch up to events. "I'm Dr. Eliza Danvers."

"A pleasure," Lena replied smoothly, her years of business meet-and-greets coming to her rescue. "You're related to Alex and Kara Danvers, I presume?"

Dr. Danvers smiled warmly at the names. "Just Alex – Kara is adopted – but they're both my girls, yes." She took a chair and sat down. "Alex told me you're looking for researchers."

Lena's eyebrows raised almost to her hairline in surprise. This was not how she intended to meet Kara's adoptive mother for the first time – of course, on reflection it didn't seem like she was going to be introduced as a prospective daughter-in-law anytime soon, so maybe this was for the best.

"You also study alien medicine and physiology?" she asked.

"Well, not right now – I'm just working as an urgent care doctor at the moment – but I did that before for a while."

"Really? Sounds like it runs in the family then." Lena leaned forward over the desk. "I used to do biomedical research before, but only on humans – but that was before this happened," she said, gesturing at the room around them. "I admit I rather miss it sometimes," she said with a wistful sigh.

They shared a polite chuckle.

"But," said Lena purposefully, "you're here now, so I assume that means you are at least interested in joining our biomed R&D division in the alien research section?" She looked at the other woman hopefully.

Eliza smiled warmly, but her words and tone were more tempered. "I am interested, yes."

Lena didn't miss the moderation. "Excellent." She reached for her phone. "Now, I'd like to bring in someone who has more details than I do, if you wouldn't mind ...?"

Dr. Danvers nodded her acceptance and Lena called up the head of her medical research division. "Hi, it's me. Can I steal you for a minute? I've got you a potential recruit. ... Great, see you in a bit." She hung up. "Sorry about that – I wanted to get her up here to answer your questions. In the meantime, perhaps we could talk about more general things?"

Eliza nodded. "That's fine."

"Now, you're a doctor, in Midvale I think it was? What made you decide to make the career change? Other than Alex hinting that you should, at least." Lena smiled.

"Well, I don't really have anything in Midvale to keep me there anymore – other than a nice house on the beach that's completely paid for, which admittedly I like. But both my girls are here, and one of them has been at least making passes at starting a family, so I've been considering making the move to the city for some time already. Your offer just came at the right time."

Lena's eyebrows twitched upward in surprise, although she was trying not to show it. She didn't really know much about Alex, but she was fairly certain Kara didn't have any love interests in her life right now – and she sort of hoped Mama Danvers was talking about Alex, because if Kara was trying to start a family, then Lena really didn't have any hope. Despite mounting evidence that Kara was straight, Lena wasn't quite ready to give up on the blonde reporter just yet – the youngest Luthor could be stubborn when she really had her heart set on something.

"So a move to the city wouldn't be a downside for you then? We are willing to offer a relocation package no matter what your previous inclinations are, since you currently live and work outside of National City. We also have fairly comprehensive e-work systems in place, although that admittedly is not applicable to lab work."

Lena gave Dr. Danvers the general rundown of the position, benefits, payscale, L-Corp employee resources, and Eliza asked a few questions about the conditions for dependents/family benefits, daycare, and commuting and rideshares. The CEO had serious trouble trying to keep a straight face throughout these pointed questions, although it coincidentally made Lena feel more sure that Mama Danvers was talking about Alex since Kara hadn't yet made a peep about wanting children specifically.

Lena was fairly certain that Kara would _not_ be able to keep such a topic under wraps – she would have been talking about it non-stop. In fact, the youngest Luthor was fairly certain that even the idea of becoming an aunt would make Kara overwhelmingly excited so she guessed that Dr. Danvers was probably playing significantly ahead of the curve on Alex's plans.

A few minutes into their discussion, a knock on the door sounded, and Dr. Satori walked in wearing a white lab coat. Lena smiled and opened her mouth to make introductions, but didn't get that far.

"Eliza??" her head of medical R&D asked in surprise.

"Kumi?? Oh my god, I haven't seen you in years!" The two woman hugged and had a warm reunion.

Lena was surprised, but also not – ambitious women in the same field tended to know of one another and her gregarious lead researcher was very well known. After giving them a few minutes to reminisce, Lena stood up from her desk and suggested that they move to the couch, signaling a change in the discussion back to professional matters.

"Well, I'm glad to see you both already know each other – that'll make a lot of this easier," Lena said, smiling. The CEO felt much more confident that she would be able to convince Dr. Danvers to join her now. They had been having a lot of trouble finding anyone with experience to join up and there was very little if any published research in the field, so just getting some researchers on board was a big win.

Lena had Dr. Satori go over some of the current research and applications on the human med side, and then how their teams worked together. The CEO paid attention to Eliza's responses, although not oppressively so.

"I'm glad this little one," the head researcher gestured at Lena, "is getting me some more quality scientists and doctors now, especially since she deprived me of my star researcher." She sniffed sharply as if insulted and crossed her arms over her chest with a glare in the CEO's direction – Lena was fairly certain it was all for show, though it was sometimes hard to tell with the doctor.

"Dr. Satori," the youngest Luthor started in long-suffering tones, "I can't be a researcher _and_ a CEO at the same time – hell, I'm barely making do just being a CEO." She gestured at the pile of papers all over her desk as evidence.

Kumi harrumphed, although she looked sympathetic. "Still working on the Supergirl thing?" she asked, glare gone and instead an assessing look in its place.

"Supergirl thing?" Eliza Danvers asked.

Lena sighed and rubbed a hand over her eyes, massaging her temples. She held up the index finger of her free hand in a reminder, saying, "This is still not officially announced so you can't tell anyone yet." Letting both her hands drop back down to her lap. "We're doing a benefit for alien supporting charities in Supergirl's honor, and there are a lot of details to work through."

"Still not delegating enough I see?" Dr. Satori asked pointedly with a raised eyebrow.

The CEO huffed. "I can't delegate this – it has to be _perfect_ ," she said frowning.

Eliza blinked in surprise at the determined tone in the young woman's voice, but since Lena was distracted with her head researcher, she didn't notice Dr. Danvers' reaction.

Another knock on the door interrupted them, and this time her hiring manager Laurent walked in. Jess must have informed him of the potential candidate, and he came prepared with a fairly generic senior researcher offer package. Lena waved him over to the couch to introduce him and so he could ask whatever questions he wanted while the CEO snagged the offer paperwork out of his hands.

She stepped away to flip through it, and with a pen she made a few changes to the specific parts that Lena thought would be of interest to Eliza from what she had gleaned out of the interview – like the expanded childcare benefit packages – and upped the offer seniority rank by one, putting Dr. Danvers at a higher entry payscale. She didn't know what the doctor's experience or current pay was, but she knew Dr. Satori's rank and payscale and since they seemed to be colleagues it would be a more adequate – and attractive – offer.

While Laurent was talking to Eliza, motioned Kumi over, and pointed out the newly edited rank on the offer package. Dr. Satori blinked in surprise, but then nodded her approval. This quick conference completed, they both went back to the couch to join the informal interview again. When her hiring manager seemed finished, Lena leaned forward to hand the offer package to Eliza.

"I don't know if you were expecting this so soon, but we'd like to officially offer you the position – all the details are here in this package, and you're welcome to look it over at your leisure. We would of course like to have you sooner, but I have changed the expiration on the offer package from our standard two weeks to four, since you probably haven't yet taken any action to start leaving your old position or move to a new city." Lena smiled. "I know first hand what a pain that is."

Eliza seemed surprised, but she didn't show it much. Lena guessed that she probably didn't show a lot of emotion through her calm and – dare she say it – downright motherly expression. The CEO gave Dr. Danvers all the relevant contact information in case she had any questions, including her own private cell number, and they shook hands.

Laurent and Dr. Satori opted to walk out with the hopefully new employee, leaving Lena in her office to get back to work. The CEO looked over at the pile of paperwork still to go and let her head fall back against the back of the couch dramatically, groaning.

\----

Surprisingly enough to Lena, the extra work did manage to get done as the date of the charity event got closer. As an added bonus, Dr. Eliza Danvers called back within a week to formally accept the offer, and when she hung up the call the CEO did a quick whoop of joy – before looking around the room to verify that no one had seen her.

The project in charge of creating the bracelet was also working out – despite several early kinks that Lena had thought would tank the gift idea. They were using one of their early stage materials research projects as the metal in the bracelet since it so far appeared to be one of the most durable substances they had ever seen.

L-Corp also had an experimental type of human-made diamond that would conduct electricity – a property rarely found in natural diamonds – during certain conditions, specifically increased temperature or incident light on the element. This property happened make the diamond also fluoresce green in sunlight, although the fluorescence was faint enough that it was difficult to tell it was glowing except in the dark (difficult to achieve right after exposing it to sunlight). To the human eye all the apparent effect was to just catch the light and turn green in sunlight. In any case, it was beautiful.

One of the problems they ran into in the development of the bracelet ended up being related to the durability of the metal. Despite that being the sought-after advantage of using the material, they had neglected to remember that the bracelet also needed to be etched and have the diamond added in – and all their efforts to adjust the shape of the metal to do this met with failure initially.

Finally they figured out a sequence of surfactants and temperature that made the material malleable enough to work with it, but it was a near thing. They had almost reached the day of the charity when the excited project lead called into Lena's office. She whooped unabashedly when she heard the news and then grabbed a couple bottles of champagne from her mini bar.

Stepping out of her office, she told Jess to hold all her calls for the next few hours and headed directly down to the lab to celebrate. Two bottles of champagne weren't enough for everyone to really feel it and they had to use sterilized lab equipment as makeshift glasses since Lena hadn't brought any down, but she promised them they'd have an open bar at the event as long as they didn't get smashed until after all the high roller guests had left. That, and the champagne currently in their beakers-turned-glasses, made it an enthusiastic celebration.


	5. Supergirl Official Charity Fundraiser, sponsored by L-Corp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG it's finally proposal time! Alternate chapter title: GENTLE HUGS KARA GENTLE HUGS  
> \--------

The day of the Thank You Supergirl Charity Benefit, despite all the odds, finally arrived. All the various people in charge of part of the event had reported in that everything was running smoothly, so the only thing Lena needed to do now was be a good hostess. This part was actually the easiest for her – all those longs hours of insipid family events while she was growing up really paid off and Lena now found it second nature to converse easily with near strangers.

The CEO was in her element. She had a deep green calf-length dress on with a side-slit that went nearly up to her hip and the genuine relief that everything had turned out so well lent her smile an irresistible quality – everyone else she met with found themselves smiling along with her. While many of the attendees were the same nationwide rich elite that Lena found rather repulsive, the generally festive atmosphere and the other guests there was enough for the CEO to fully enjoy herself.

Supergirl was of course there in her trademark supersuit, often floating over the guests and looking off into the distance, but also dropping down to mingle with the guests – Lena noticed this was usually next to food tables, and she dropped a quick note to her manager in charge of the catering to get them to offer lots of food to the hero. The benefit was for her after all and the CEO guessed that superheroing used up a lot of calories.

Dr. Eliza Danvers was there along with her new boss Dr. Kumi Satori and several other researchers from various teams. J'na was also mingling with the guests, her soothing voice calming the nerves of the other guests and her outwardly alien features drawing lots of stares. She wasn't the only alien in attendance either – they also had Torine, who mostly kept herself to a corner of the gala and only spoke to other L-Corp employees out of nerves. However since the woman could be seen from across the floor with her strange coloring, she gave the event a more alien atmosphere without demanding that Torine interact with anyone.

Also J'onn was there, Supergirl's sometimes ally in protecting the city and who Lena had learned was the last Green Martian after wars wiped out almost their entire species. He mostly stood off to the side looking stoic, although he did make a point of talking to J'na and Torine, which Lena was grateful for since she herself hadn't been able to spend much time talking to them with her duties as a hostess. The CEO had also spoken with the Green Martian, although only briefly, and found him to be polite if rather laconic.

Dr. Danvers had brought her daughter Alex along as her plus one, although the elder daughter appeared far less pleased to be there than her mother. She almost seemed to be standing guard for the event, which Lena suspected she might actually be doing. Her presence along with the Green Martian and Supergirl, plus the security firm that Lena had hired, probably made this the most protected place in the city tonight.

Finally, the time came for Lena to thank everyone for coming and present the hero with her gift. She was feeling a little tipsy by now – champagne always snuck up on her and the CEO had had more than a couple glasses – but she had practiced this speech so much that she had no trouble with it despite her semi-inebriated state. However, she was probably smiling too much and too widely at Supergirl standing next to her than she normally did, though the slightly tipsiness helped Lena not worry so much about that right then.

She had called Supergirl down from her protective floating and thanked the guests in attendance, announcing that they had exceeded their fundraising goal. Then she turned to the hero next to her – suddenly noticing that those stage lights really lit up the hero's eyes and made the ripples of muscle under her supersuit impossible to miss – and thanked her for her duty to the city and citizens of National City. The applause was thunderous and there were quite a lot of cheers mixed in. The superhero blushed at that, which Lena found adorable.

Then came the presentation of the bracelet, which Lena held in her hands to the crowd while explaining its near indestructible properties so that the superhero wouldn't have to worry about damaging it in a fight, if she chose to wear it. She also read aloud the engraving on the underside of the bracelet, "To the heart of National City", at which there was another round of appreciative applause.

Lena turned to face Supergirl then – the Kryptonian woman looked surprised and incredibly flattered – and asked the hero if she would let Lena put it on her wrist. When the hero just gaped open-mouthed at her, Lena hurriedly added that she didn't have to wear it, it was hers regardless, but then Supergirl seemed to recollect herself and said, rather breathlessly, that of course she wanted to wear it.

Lena beamed at the hero – it probably was too wide of a smile, but the CEO really didn't care right now and anyways Supergirl was being so cute – and attached it around the superhero's wrist. She took a moment then to explain how to open and close the clasp, which had been designed to work well even with only one hand.

"It should also be loose enough to wear either over your suit or under it, as you want," Lena said while Supergirl admired the bracelet on her wrist, twisting it this way and that as Lena spoke. "This center part is a type of special diamond that glows green in sunlight, but the glow is so dim in sunlight that it mostly just turns green."

The hero looked up at Lena then like she'd never been given anything this wonderful before, and before the CEO could more than blink Supergirl had enveloped her in a tight hug. "Thank you so much! It's beautiful," she said. Lena laughed and returned the hero's embrace.

"Hey, I'm supposed to be thanking _you_ ," she laughed into the shoulder of the supersuit. "Today's all about you, not me."

Supergirl only laughed at that, spinning them around, and it was at that point that Lena realized they were floating over the stage, turning slowly in mid-air. She realized that she must be a lot tipsier than she thought if they were flying and Lena hadn't even realized it till now. But the hero in her arms continued to laugh and Lena couldn't help but laugh along with her.

Eventually they settled down again on the ground next to the stage and the crowd immediately surged forward towards the pair – Supergirl had lots of admirers requesting to see the bracelet and Lena got question after question about the development of the materials and congratulations on the success of the project. They were quickly separated in the crowd but whenever Lena glanced towards the Superhero, she saw the woman smiling back at her happily so the CEO was content that her gift had been well-received.

The bracelet presentation was the official end of the charity benefit – although the CEO had announced that permanent links to the individual charities' donation pages would be available on the L-Corp website for the foreseeable future, should anyone feel generous later – and Lena, realizing just how much the champagne was affecting her after their trip in the air, tried to focus on not slurring her words while extracting herself from the many people that approached her. She deflected most inquiries about the materials to her PR contact for the bracelet that she had set up in anticipation of the generated interest, and otherwise moved towards the exit as gracefully as she could while shaking hands.

She knew the party would still continue for a while, but the teams she'd set up should be able to handle just about everything that came up. The exhaustion after weeks of work to reach this point were also catching up to her – Lena wondered if that might be more of the cause of her supposed drunkenness rather than just the champagne itself – and she successfully made it to the outskirts of the party where her event crew were hiding. When she arrived she got immediate congratulations from her team, and she praised them for a job well done and told them that in roughly an hour (the time they'd estimated for the rest of the high roller guests to leave) they were off the clock and could party as they saw fit. This got a much more enthusiastic response and Lena was spontaneously hugged several times.

When she accidentally said out loud, " _Fuck_ , I'm drunk," to much laughter amongst her crew, she knew she really had to go, so she messaged all the important people and then got in the car called for her to go back to her apartment. Thanking her past-self for planning this on a Friday night, Lena barely managed to remove her dress before she fell over on the bed, falling asleep almost as soon as she laid her head down.

Lena didn't stir later when soft booted feet touched down on her balcony and came softly into the room. The covers were pulled up over her, and then Supergirl left again, taking care to close the balcony door softly on her way out.

\----

When Kara touched back down onto the ground after spinning over the crowd, Lena still laughing in her arms, the hero felt so giddy still that she had to repeatedly check to make sure she wasn't unconsciously floating. She could hear the CEO nearby responding to questions about the material and construction of the bracelet in an uncharacteristically bubbly voice, and honestly Kara herself felt pretty bubbly too, especially every time she heard someone say congratulations to either herself or Lena.

She finally made her way over to J'onn, who was of course standing there with a dour expression on his face like it was a funeral – really, sometimes Kara couldn't understand how the man could always be so gruff all the time. They both stared at each other a beat before Supergirl couldn't resist any longer and pulled him into an almost Kryptonian-strength hug, knowing the other alien could take it.

"J'onn!!" she whisper-squealed into his ear, and he finally melted into a smile and patted her back. Kara couldn't exactly go squeal at Eliza or Alex just yet, at least not while she was dressed as Supergirl and not Kara Danvers, so J'onn would have to do for now and Kara intended to make the most of it.

"Ok ok!" he said after a while of her hugging the Martian, exasperated but not unhappy, and she finally released him.

Kara showed the bracelet off to him then, talking about the properties Lena had described to her, until J'onn admitted that yes, it was a wonderful gift, and unsuccessfully tried to get her to stop talking about it.

Later, after Kara found that Lena had left sometime before – she could no longer hear the CEO's voice nearby – Supergirl made her farewells and flew off. She hadn't gotten much of a chance to talk to the L-Corp CEO at the event, especially not after Lena had given her the bracelet at the end of the party, and she wanted to at least tell her goodnight. The superhero was trying to work up her nerve to give Lena a kiss even, especially now that Kara knew that the youngest Luthor liked her that way, what with the CEO giving her the bracelet.

However, when she landed on the CEO's balcony, she found the human woman sprawled out on her bed fast asleep. Lena hadn't even put pajamas on or gotten under the covers, and Kara was worried that Lena might get cold or sick laying mostly naked and exposed like that – and the superhero's cheeks blushed bright red at the realization that Lena was mostly naked.

Supergirl shook herself sharply, trying to remind herself that there were things more important than the fact that Lena was amazingly attractive, and she padded through the open balcony door. Lena was half laying on the covers, face down on the bed with one cheek pressed against the mattress, so Kara gently pulled the bedding out from under, trying to not look at her too closely while she was like this – one, because Lena was asleep and didn't need Kara ogling her without her consent, and two, Kara would probably spontaneously combust from the sheer sexiness of the sleeping woman. It didn't matter if Lena was drooling slightly into the sheets, it was still sexy. Kara would gladly let the CEO drool all over her and she would still find it sexy.

Once she'd safely tucked the CEO in, Lena mumbling something unintelligible in her sleep, Kara ducked back out the door and closed it quietly behind her. She would just have to wait till tomorrow to try kissing her. Supergirl sighed softly and launched herself into the night.

\----

As soon as Kara had flown away from Lena's apartment, she tried to see if Alex or Eliza had gone home from the party yet. When she called them up on her phone, they were still driving home and even though Kara had intended to save her excited reactions until they were all together in person, she couldn't help squealing exuberantly into the phone until Alex complained and made Kara hang up.

Since she couldn't squeal in person with them yet, not for the next ten minutes at least, and had been banned from calling again unless it was an emergency, Kara did the next best thing and shot herself high up into the atmosphere where she could shriek gleefully and do loop-de-loops on the edge of space without bothering her sister or anyone else. When her self-imposed time limit of 15 minutes had passed and the superhero had burned off some of her excess happy energy, she flew back down to Alex's apartment.

She came in through Alex's balcony door just as her sister and mother were changing from their dresses into pajamas. Kara saw them both and suddenly was just as excited as she had been 15 minutes ago, clutching her hands next to her face excitedly and making effusive noises. But when Kara opened up her mouth to start talking, Alex quickly held up a hand.

"Ah ah ah!" she said grumpily. "You have to change into your pajamas too before you can-"

Kara supersped into the bedroom, stole some of her older sister's sleep clothes, and then sped back, now changed. "All done!" the Kryptonian exclaimed triumphantly.

Alex just sighed and said, "Fine then, go ahead and- GENTLE HUGS KARA GENTLE HUGS."

Kara reduced her hug strength on her sister, but couldn't help as she squealed happily, bouncing up and down slightly, "AlexAlexAlex, oh my god! She gave me a bracelet!!"

Eliza laughed and called out, "Kara, come let me see it." Kara zipped over to the other room where her adoptive mother was changing and the Mama Danvers promptly added, "But no superspeed in the house."

The superhero pouted for all of a fraction of a second at the restriction but couldn't help from going immediately back to smiling hugely. Kara held up her wrist to the older woman and bounced up and down – although gently, so she didn't break the floor and make Alex mad like the last time. "Look Eliza! Isn't it beautiful? Oh my god Eliza, she gave me a bracelet! She likes me that way! Oh my god _Lena Luthor likes me that way_!" Kara exclaimed before reverting back into incoherent excited squealing.


	6. You know you just proposed to Supergirl, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Detective Maggie I-have-no-regrets Sawyer makes an appearance.  
> \---------

Lena had a packed weekend. Unfortunately, all of the extraneous meetings and other business dealings that she had put off to take care of the last minute details for the Supergirl benefit hadn't evaporated overnight, and so the CEO had to pack meetings all throughout the weekend. She flew to Metropolis midday the next morning – she thanked her past self for her perspicacity again on how well she lined everything up – to take care of the meetings in person and stayed until late Sunday night.

Despite the packed weekend, Lena was rather happy about things. Her PR manager was ecstatic about the good press – there was a front page picture of Supergirl and Lena floating over the stage, both laughing, with the 'Thank You Supergirl' banner in the background – and the investors were pleased at the new research direction. In a perfect world the CEO would also have liked to get some rest, but overall this was good.

She replied to Kara's texts saying that she couldn't get back till Monday, smiling at the reporter's repeated messages saying that she missed Lena and wanted to know immediately when the CEO got back so she could see her. Lena's heart thumped happily at that, and she wondered what had happened to cause this change – Kara had always been happy to see Lena or spend time with her, but the blonde hadn't been this insistent about it before.

It wasn't until four days after the presentation of the bracelet that she found out what exactly giving a bracelet meant on Krypton.

A detective barged into her office while she was finishing up a conference call to her Tokyo materials R&D branch, a visibly angry Jess following in the detective's wake. Lena sighed silently and waved the detective over to the couch as she continued speaking over the phone. It wasn't a confidential call even if the detective understood Japanese which she estimated was unlikely, and it was probably a lot more efficient to just let the woman in rather than trying to kick her out. Jess resolutely stayed standing in the doorway, occasionally shooting daggers with her eyes at the infuriatingly calm detective on the couch.

Lena hung up the phone and looked over at the detective, realizing that Lena recognized the other woman. "Can I help you, Detective ... Sawyer?" she asked, fishing a bit for the name.

"That's right," she said, with a rather mischievous grin.

Lena thought to herself that that smile couldn't be a good sign.

"I came by just because I wondered if you knew about Kryptonians and bracelets," Detective Sawyer said, standing up from the couch and walking over to CEO's desk, still grinning. When Lena only blinked, the detective continued. "You know, on Krypton a bracelet is sort of like an engagement ring."

Jess dropped her tablet with a rather undignified squeak, and Lena felt her heart plummet in her chest. "What?" the CEO said, sounding strangled.

The damned detective was grinning wider now. "Yep!" Sawyer said brightly, "you basically asked Supergirl to marry you. And she looked pretty happy about it, to be perfectly honest."

"I ... what ... _fuck_ ," Lena finished forcefully, putting a hand up to her face.

Detective Sawyer took pity on the youngest Luthor and relented, reaching down to pick up Jess' tablet and return it to her before sitting down in one of the chairs in front of Lena's desk.

"Look," she said sympathetically, "as much as I enjoyed ribbing you just now, the truth is that the culture is rather different between Krypton and Earth. On Krypton romantic marriages are rare and the bracelet is like requesting someone to consider being your partner for life. Translated to Earth US customs, that would probably be like asking someone to formally start dating you."

Although Lena pinned the detective with a sharp look at the comment about ribbing, the CEO started calming down as she listened to the other woman speak. Jess pulled a chair up to the side and started scribbling down notes, as if this were an important business meeting – which, well, it sort of was.

"Well," Lena said, "asking her to date, that's not so bad."

Detective Sawyer smiled wider, dimples showing. "No, and she didn't seem to think so either."

Lena laughed then. "I guess now I understand better why she looked so surprised and flattered when I said I wanted to put the bracelet on her then." The CEO started, realizing something. "Did it mean something more serious when I put it on her? That was where she got all shy and started blushing."

Sawyer smirked, eyes sparkling. "That was probably the part that convinced Supergirl the most that you knew you were proposing a relationship when you gave her the bracelet, that it was more than just a simple gift."

"'Proposing a relationship'?" Lena repeated, then put a hand up over her mouth. "Wait, she said yes when I asked to put the bracelet on her.... Oh my god, am I Supergirl's girlfriend now?" The CEO gaped, a blush creeping up onto her cheeks.

Jess, damn her, started laughing at that, not stopping even when Lena turned glare at her. Detective Sawyer soon joined the assistant's laughter.

Lena groaned, "This isn't funny you two."

"Sorry, Ms. Luthor," Jess said, wiping tears from her eyes as she started to get control of her laughter, "but I think I have to disagree with you there – this is incredibly funny."

Lena huffed, although only half-heartedly. "Well, I mean, it's nice to have a girlfriend, even if I have no way to contact her and hardly ever see her." She gave a self-deprecating half smile at that.

The CEO finally calmed the other two down enough to something resembling seriousness, and she grilled the detective on Kryptonian customs and what might be expected of her now that she was 'dating' a Kryptonian. It seemed like Supergirl would at some point give Lena a bracelet back, which would be more akin to an Earth engagement for marriage, but that would probably be after some six months to a year of dating. Lena could be ok with that – that was a reasonable amount of time to get to know someone before getting serious.

She also questioned Detective Sawyer on what happened when either party didn't want to continue the 'courtship', as the detective referred to it, but Sawyer didn't really know much about that part. Apparently her knowledge extended only to the start of alien mating customs rather than the later particulars, simply because her interest stemmed from wanting to avoid such cultural misunderstandings in the first place – knowledge that would have been very helpful to Lena before she'd gotten to this point.

"I have to warn you," the detective said, more somberly, "if you want to break things off ... well, Supergirl is genuinely happy about the idea of dating you, and she is defending you vociferously against your detractors in the government agency that she works for. Before I got here, just this morning, she had already used 'she's a wonderful person', 'smells nice', 'is amazingly beautiful' – and I believe she added an 'oh my _god_ ' to that one too – 'doesn't care what you think of her', and 'always does the right thing' in your defense."

Lena was taken aback and found herself completely unable to stop herself from smiling and blushing at the compliments. She hadn't realized how much the hero genuinely liked her, which was very apparent from her comments. The youngest Luthor wasn't used to having people defend her like that, and Supergirl _was_ very attractive. There was however, the small problem of Kara.

"Well ... no, I guess I don't want to break it off, at least not right now," she smiled softly again, still unable to stop herself. "I just ... I sort of was trying to date Kara still."

Jess sighed at that. The assistant had mostly stayed out of the conversation up to this point, acting primarily as just a note-taker. "Ms. Luthor, maybe you need to just admit it's not going to work. I mean, someone who had their office filled with flowers more than once and _still_ doesn't realize you're flirting with her? Maybe she's just straight," Jess reasoned, finishing with a one-shoulder shrug.

Lena's shoulders sank. "I know," she sighed dejectedly. "I just ... she's so _cute_ , I don't know if I can give up on her completely just yet."

Jess rolled her eyes.

Meanwhile, Detective Sawyer was gaping, her gaze ping-ponging between the two businesswomen as they spoke. "You filled her office with flowers??" she asked incredulously.

Lena realized what she'd just admitted to and blushed fiercely. "Errr, yes."

"More than once??" the detective continued.

Lena winced, and Jess took the initiative to answer, "Three times, actually."

Sawyer suddenly burst out laughing. Lena eyed her warily, not trusting that this wouldn't end with more ribbing.

"Well," Sawyer said when the detective caught her breath. "I would say don't give up on her then." She shrugged with a smile.

Lena blinked. "But ... wouldn't that make Supergirl upset? I mean, considering I just asked her to be my girlfriend a few days ago."

Sawyer replied, eyes sparkling with amusement, "I'm not sure that it's necessarily an exclusive arrangement, and besides, have you even gone on a date yet with Supergirl? Or Kara?"

The CEO pursed her lips in thought. "Not with Supergirl, no, but I've asked Kara out to lunch or dinner many times now, although I never explicitly said they were dates."

Smile growing more with each passing moment, Detective Sawyer responded, "Well, I think you have your answer then – play it by ear and see how things go."

Lena considered for a moment. She was certainly attracted to both of them, so for now she thought she might as well take this advice.

Before walking over to the door though, the detective had one more thing to say. "Oh, and please don't mention that I've spoken to you about this? My girlfriend is one of the people trying to convince Supergirl to break things off with you or at least slow way down, and she would be pretty upset with me if she found out I was encouraging you in any way."

Lena was surprised at that. "Why are you helping me then?"

"Honestly? Because I've never seen Supergirl this happy before and I don't think my girlfriend has the right idea about this. I couldn't just sit by and do nothing when you're both up against all this resistance by yourselves." She turned back to the door and put her palm on the handle, then said over her shoulder, "Also, I have a bet with my girlfriend that you too will get together long-term, and I intend to win."

Sawyer grinned and walked out, leaving Lena chuckling behind her. The CEO rather liked this mischievous detective, and was glad she was on her side.


	7. Adrenaline-fueled kisses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP, ladies, laddies, and gentlefolk, I present to you ... the reveal.

The next couple days ended up being hectic for Lena (again). She was glad she'd gone out of her way to take care of a chunk of the workload over the weekend, otherwise she'd have been _really_ swamped. As it was, between Kara's schedule and hers they hadn't been able to meet up even once since Lena had decided that she wasn't going to give up on the reporter. Lena held fast to that goal.

Lena looked up from the document she was typing out and stretched, hearing her back popping in places, groaning as she noted the time on the clock. She didn't know how it had gotten so late so quickly and there was still so much left to do. Her neck was a bit stiff from looking down at her laptop, and she rubbed at it absently as she proofread what she'd just written.

A whooshing sound on her balcony made the CEO turn, and she saw Supergirl land softly, laden with what appeared to be takeout bags, and peek her head inside the door. "Hi," she said, smiling as she caught Lena's eyes. "I thought you might be working still."

The CEO couldn't help but laugh tiredly at that. "That's probably always a safe assumption," she admitted. She stood up from her desk, taking one of the bags from the hero's hands and glancing inside the bags curiously. "What did you get?"

"Oh! There was a new special down at the place down on Fifth and I really wanted to try it, but I got extra other stuff just in case you don't like it." Supergirl started taking containers out and placing them on the coffee table.

Lena was amused that Supergirl got food from Kara's favorite place and was just wondering if she should mention that when the hero started talking again.

"And I mean, it's my favorite place, and I'm pretty sure you like it too-" Supergirl paused abruptly, scrunching her eyebrows together cutely, and Lena noted in passing that she got the same little line between her eyebrows that Kara did, "-well, you've never said you _didn't_ like it at any rate. You _do_ like this place, don't you?"

Lena looked at the hero, confused. Supergirl's and Kara's favorite places being the same wasn't surprising, but Supergirl being pretty sure she liked this restaurant? That was odd. "I do? I mean, I pretty much like any good food."

"Oh ok, good," the hero said, relieved and smiling brightly.

Lena couldn't help but respond with a big smile of her own, and she felt warm and fuzzy at the idea that this might be – probably was – a date. Her first date with a superhero. Supergirl wasted no time digging in, and although she shared Kara's enthusiasm for food she definitely ate faster – fast enough for it to not be possible for a human. Lena laughingly scolded her for it, saying the hero would never taste it if she ate it that fast.

The intercom buzzed on the table then, and Lena started in surprise. "Oh my god, I forgot about Jess!" She pushed the com button and promptly apologized for forgetting the time and told Jess to go home now. Before Lena could finish speaking, her office door opened and Jess poked her head inside.

"Not without you- oh!" Jess squeaked at seeing the Superhero. "I didn't realize you had company."

"It's ok Jess, it's my fault though. I should be apologizing to you because I completely forgot to tell you that she'd stopped by."

"Hi Jess," Supergirl said brightly. "Are you hungry? I got extra."

Jess pursed her lips, eyes amused. "Uh no, thank you but I'm not going to interrupt your date." She turned back to Lena. "I'll just be going then Ms. Luthor, I trust you won't be working after dinner and will get yourself a ride home?" She gave a significant look at the still-eating superhero, who choked a little at the executive assistant's glance.

Lena smiled. "Yes, I think I'll be fine – goodnight Jess."

"'Night, Ms. Luthor."

Once her assistant had left, Lena was curious about Jess' last comment and decided she should find out more about it.

"Hmmm," Lena said, eyes crinkled with amusement. " _Are_ you giving me a ride home, Supergirl?" she asked, tone the slightest bit flirty.

Supergirl blushed bright red. "Uh, yes – I mean, unless you don't want me to," she added quickly.

"Well, I don't much like flying," Lena mused, but then lifted her eyes coyly to the hero, "but I think it would be nice to get to fly with you in a situation where you're not rescuing me from physical danger."

The blonde superhero flushed even brighter and spluttered, reminding Lena very strongly of Kara. The CEO could tell she was going to have just as much fun making Supergirl blush as she did with the reporter, and grinned at the thought.

They finished off their food – Supergirl went back to her superspeed eating so that way she could finish up at almost the same time as Lena – and then cleaned up the boxes. Lena shut everything down in her office and locked the door from the inside, before turning back to the hero standing next to the balcony door.

"So, how do we do this?" she asked, putting her purse over one shoulder and stepping close to the hero.

Supergirl ducked her head a little sheepishly. "Well, when I rescue people I usually use a bridal or fireman's carry, but ... maybe you can just stand on my boots and hold on to me? It'll be like hugging."

"Kind of like at the charity," Lena replied.

The superhero blushed. "Yeah, just like that."

Lena made one adjustment to the proposed flying position and decided to take off her shoes – heels were probably not good footwear for being suspended in the air, especially since they had a tendency to come off suddenly – looping the straps over one finger before stepped forward to wrap her arms around Supergirl's waist.

The hero blushed even brighter, and Lena noted that Supergirl was taller than she expected without her heels – her eyes only came only up to the other woman's chin. Before she could comment however, the hero wrapped her arms around Lena and they took off, although significantly slower than the CEO had seen the superhero fly off when solo.

Lena's breath caught in her throat at the sensation of lifting off and she instinctively ducked her head to the suited chest in front of her – but unlike other types of flying, the youngest Luthor felt completely safe wrapped up in Supergirl's arms. They tilted over from being completely upright and the CEO reflexively tightened her grip around the superhero's waist, but the blonde had rolled them slightly so Lena was flying with her side down rather than with Lena's back towards the ground.

After a few minutes of just clinging tightly to Supergirl, Lena felt relaxed enough to pull her head out of her tuck and look around a bit, admiring the view. Normally when she flew with Supergirl they were trying to escape or there was a rush to avoid danger, so she'd never had the leisure to just look at the city passing below them before.

It didn't take long for them to reach Lena's balcony, and all the questions the youngest Luthor had had swirling around in her head – how the hero had known where she lived, if Supergirl liked shorter women, how she was to contact the hero again when she wanted a date – all of them, all the questions were lost in the pounding of her heart as the hero touched them down gently. Lena's heartbeat was so loud it was all she could hear.

Lena just stood there, not releasing her grip on the superhero at all, feeling the excitement of the flight still coursing through her. Looking up at the other woman, with her wind-swept blonde hair looking incredibly sexy, Lena did the only thing she was capable of doing in that very moment and reached up to kiss her.

The kiss was neither soft nor gentle – instead it was a product of all the emotions swirling around inside Lena's chest desperately trying to get out. Supergirl responded almost instantly, kissing Lena back just as passionately. Neither woman noticed when the heels dropped off Lena's fingers or when the CEO's hands started roaming over the supersuit.

After a bit, Lena needed air and broke the kiss, leaning her forehead down against one side of the hero's jaw, breathing heavily. Distantly she noticed that Supergirl's breathing was also heavy, and that one of the superhero's hands had ended up cupping her butt. Lena giggled a little, feeling giddy and a bit out of control.

"Do you always take the girls out flying after dates, Supergirl?" the youngest Luthor asked breathlessly, head still resting against the hero's jaw. "I gotta say, it does the trick." She just stayed there, trying to catch her breath, her eyes closed.

Supergirl laughed lightly, and _oh god_ , she sounded so breathless, too. "No," the blonde hero said softly, almost whispering, "just you."

Lena laughed and, realizing that she still had her bag over one arm and that they were still standing on her balcony, moved one hand up to rest on the crest on the other woman's supersuit and used it to push herself back gently.

Supergirl moved her hands to rest on Lena's shoulders, and it looked like she was about to say something when she looked down in concern, frowning. "You're shaking."

Lena blinked in surprise at the hand on the Super crest in front of her, and noticed that it was indeed trembling. "Oh, I-" she started to say.

But before she could finish voicing her thought, Supergirl picked the CEO up and swiftly carried her inside. Lena spluttered, but couldn't seem to actually get any words out until Supergirl had already deposited her on the sofa in the living room and had sped off to the kitchen.

Lena sprang back up to her feet from the sofa. "Supergirl," she said, exasperated. She could hear the sounds of cupboards opening and closing in the kitchen. "I'm not _dying_ , it's just nerves- oh!"

Suddenly the superhero was in front of Lena again, holding out a steaming cup in front of her.

"How did you get that so fast?" the CEO asked, accepting the mug without thinking about it. The smell of the CEO's favorite herbal tea wafted up from the cup.

The hero replied, preening a little, "Superspeed."

Lena shook her head sharply, dismissing the distraction of the tea. "As I was saying, I'm not dying, this is just what happens to some people when they come down from an adrenaline rush," she tried to explain seriously.

Supergirl sat down on the couch and looked up at her pointedly, as if suggesting that the youngest Luthor should be sitting down too.

Lena sighed and sat down. Her hands were a bit cold so she wrapped both of them around the mug, trying to soak up some of the warmth radiating from it. She looked over at the superhero, deciding if she wanted to try re-explaining herself, but thought better of it.

Instead, the CEO settled herself with raising an eyebrow at the hero and asking, "Better?"

Supergirl's eyes sparkled with amusement. "Well, you could try drinking it."

Lena snorted a laugh, trying to hold it in so she didn't spill the hot tea in her hands. She blew on the drink a bit and then took a sip.

The hero didn't seem to be finished speaking though and added, "You know, if you wanted to touch something warm, you could have just put your hands on me – I have a pretty high body temperature." And then, spoiling the smooth persona somewhat, Supergirl seemed to hear her own words once they were out of her mouth and blushed a bright red.

Lena's jaw dropped momentarily at the suggestion and then the CEO laughed heartily. Oh, Supergirl wanted to see who could flirt better, did she? Lena knew how to play that game.

"Oh, _do_ you?" Lena asked lowly, leaning towards the hero, who gulped. "And where exactly should I put my hands?" Supergirl's mouth opened and closed quickly, no sound escaping. "How about ... here?" Lena purred, taking one of her hands off her mug and laying it over the base of the other woman's neck where it met her shoulder. The youngest Luthor could feel the hero's pulse jumping under her hand. "Hmmm," Lena mused, "yeah, you _are_ pretty hot."

The superhero gulped again, blushing all the way down her neck now, and Lena felt both the swallow and the increased heat in a way that affected her viscerally. Suddenly the CEO's own pulse increased and Lena was the one feeling the need to swallow now.

"I think I should put this mug down before I spill it on myself," Lena said, and she could hear the breathlessness in her own voice. Apparently, Supergirl could too, because the other woman smiled a little and looked less nervous. Lena wasn't sure if she was ready to find out what else Supergirl could do when she was feeling smooth so she set the tea down to distract herself.

A question occurred to Lena as looked at the tea. "How did you know where my tea was anyway?" the youngest Luthor asked.

The hero smiled lopsidedly. "You made some for me once, remember? And I liked it and so I thought it would be good to make it for you now."

Lena frowned, trying to think back to when she'd made tea for Supergirl – she was fairly certain she would have remembered that. In fact, there was only one person she'd ever invited over to her apartment since she'd moved to National City that Lena could recall.

Before the CEO could ponder that idea too much, Supergirl's head turned sharply and she looked off into the distance, as if hearing something only she could hear. The hero stood up suddenly. "I have to go."

"Of course," Lena said immediately, guessing that the superhero would probably do something silly like try to apologize for having to leave to save the city. When Supergirl opened her mouth, Lena cut her off. "Just go, you don't need to apologize for having to leave. I know you're needed."

The superhero smiled gratefully and then took off in a blur without saying anything else. The blur reappeared and Supergirl sped back into the room to leave a note on the table, saying, "In case of emergencies." With that she zipped off into the night.

As rush of wind through the apartment from Supergirl's passage died down, Lena guessed that the superhero had left. She looked down at the piece of paper on the table, tucked under the edge of one of the books there, and picked it up.

It was a phone number. Lena smiled. She walked over to get her phone – which was still in the bedroom where she'd dropped it. She retrieved it and closed the balcony door, then noticed her shoes were still outside. She brought them in and went back to the couch, smiling as she added in Supergirl's number. She put it under SG with a series of heart emojis, before she decided that might be too easy to guess if someone saw her contacts list and put SH for 'superhero' instead.

She picked up her mug of tea again and drank, trying to enjoy it before it got too cold, settling herself back down on the couch with her legs tucked underneath her. She ran over the events of the night in her head as she sat there, relaxing. A couple things stuck out in her mind that puzzled her, but she couldn't figure out what she was missing.

A realization hit her then as she idly played with the string from the teabag, and her jaw dropped. Supergirl had said she'd made tea for her, but the only person who'd come to her apartment was Kara and Lena just remembered that she'd made tea for Kara that night. She couldn't quite remember what kind of tea it was, but it could definitely have been this one – Lena had been more focused on the fact that _Kara_ _fucking_ _Danvers_ was in her flat and internally squealing about it than what kind of tea she had been making. She and Kara had made small talk before Kara had needed to go home and get some sleep.

"Oh my god," Lena said softly to herself, the final pieces of the puzzle snapping into place.

Kara Danvers was Supergirl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [insert external squeeing here]


	8. Standing lunch date

Lena sat in her office chair at work the next day, staring at her monitor but not really seeing anything, her mind still reeling over the realization that Kara was Supergirl. Honestly, the CEO should have seen the similarities between the two blondes a long time ago – Kara herself had even once told Lena that she'd 'flown in on a bus', for fuck's sake. 

Now that she knew, the youngest Luthor was mentally cataloging all the similarities between the two. Suddenly everything seemed so obvious to Lena. Even though hindsight was notoriously 20-20, it was surprising to the CEO that _everyone_ didn't know who Supergirl's alter ego was just from how much evidence there was. Lena was pretty sure that Detective Maggie Sawyer had known that Kara and Supergirl were the same person when she'd come by, and that's why the detective had looked so mischievous when she had suggested that Lena continue seeing both of them. 

Well, one thing that Lena had inherited with her Luthor name that she didn't totally reject was her long memory. There would come a time and a place when Lena could return the mischief – of course, Lena rather liked the detective, so it wouldn't really be anything bad, but just enough to let Detective Sawyer know she'd been caught out. 

Not that the youngest Luthor was upset about how things had turned out – far from it. Lena had been trying to date Kara for _months_ , and now she'd finally managed it – but just in the most backasswards way imaginable. The CEO had also gotten the Girl of Steel as a girlfriend as part of the deal, too, and Lena had admittedly daydreamed about Supergirl's biceps before – and that was even before the charity benefit, back when she was just a normal CEO with a normal hero crush trying to keep her struggling company afloat, a CEO who didn't have a Kryptonian girlfriend. And now here Lena was, trying to mentally merge her fantasy future with Kara and her fantasy future with Supergirl in her head. 

It was giving Lena _thoughts_ and she was not okay. 

There was a knock and then her office door opened, and who else should step in but the subject of her thoughts (and daydreams), Kara-Supergirl herself, smiling brightly at Lena as she walked into the office. The youngest Luthor found herself instantly melting in that bright smile. 

"Hi," Kara said, with her devastating smile still at full force. 

Recollecting herself after a few moments of getting lost in Kara's smile, Lena looked up at the clock. "You're early for lunch," she commented – and it was true. It was only 10am. 

Kara paused just inside the door, and then exhaled sharply. "I know, I just ... wanted to see you," she said, the last few words all coming out in a rush, gazing at Lena like she was dying and the CEO was her only cure. The hero incognito started striding purposefully towards Lena and the CEO felt an anticipatory shiver run down her back at that look and walk. 

Lena stood up from her chair on instinct, which turned out to be a good idea because Kara didn't stop at the far side of the desk – no, she went clear around it to catch Lena in a searing kiss. Lena inhaled in surprise and her hands immediately came up to hold Kara's face against hers – or maybe it was just to hold on, Lena wasn't really sure. The kiss was intense and passionate and Lena didn't know if her lungs were burning for air or if she just needed more Kara. 

Eventually, Kara broke the kiss and ducked her head down to press her forehead against Lena's, her eyes still closed, both of them gasping for air. 

"If that's ... what you mean when you say ... you want to see me, ... then I'm going to have ... _very_ different expectations for our dates," Lena said, half-laughing, half-gasping. 

"What? I'm a very ... affectionate person," Kara gasped in reply. The superhero-incognito turned and lifted her head slightly so that she was effectively nuzzling her nose into Lena's cheek. "But what I mean is that I wanted to come back to your place last night, but by the time I was finished with that fire, it was just so late and I didn't want to wake or keep you up." Kara pulled her head back and gazed at Lena, tenderly brushing a few stray locks of Lena's hair back from her face. "You need your sleep." 

"Kara," Lena said, a bit incredulously but also a bit flirty, "if you want me to stay in bed longer then the _very best_ thing you could do is to come over." She knew she probably shouldn't be baiting Kara with more flirtation right after that incredibly hot making out that they'd just done, but Lena really couldn't help herself when it came to trying to make her hero blush. 

And Kara did blush – but she also looked at Lena a little bit hungrily and bit down on her lower lip, and suddenly Lena was the one blushing. This was definitely _not_ a conversation she should be having at work, the CEO realized a bit belatedly. 

Of course, just then the intercom buzzer sounded. Lena reached over to the button without fully letting go of Kara, half-ready to just clear the rest of her schedule and so she could make out with Kara in her office all day. 

"Yes, Jess?" 

"Dr. Eliza Danvers is here to see you." 

" _Shit_ ," Lena said with feeling. "Give me five minutes please, Jess." She turned to Kara. "I uh, was sort of hoping to put that conversation off for a little while longer." 

Kara winced slightly. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I sorta already had the 'so you have a girlfriend, huh' conversation with her a bit ago when she came over after the benefit, but it surprisingly turned out to not be that bad." She smiled reassuringly. "Especially now that she's already gotten to know you a little bit since you're her boss." 

Lena huffed, quickly grabbing a couple tissues and trying to wipe the smeared lipstick off Kara's face, saying, "More like her boss' boss' boss – I've hardly spent any time in her company yet, so it's like I haven't even given her a chance to get to know me before she finds out I want to be with her daughter." 

Kara blushed brightly again, and the corner of Lena's mouth twitched upward but she just went back to making her superhero look presentable. Kara snagged a couple tissues herself to return the favor and clean up the CEO's smudged lipstick. Once Lena was reasonably assured that it didn't look like they had just been heavily making out in her office, she buzzed Jess to send Eliza in, shooing Kara over to the couch. 

Lena took a deep breath before walking away from her desk. 

The door to her office opened and Dr. Danvers let herself in. Lena – nerves be damned – stopped her progress towards the couch and instead redirected herself towards the door. All that early Luthor training on how to be a good hostess was practically ingrained in her, and greeting a potential future mother-in-law most certainly meant walking over to meet them as they came in. 

"Hi, Dr. Danvers, it's good to see you again," Lena said as she approached, reached a hand forward to take the doctor's. 

Eliza Danvers however, had no interest in the cold Luthor-style way of greeting that Lena had been brought up with, and instead pulled the youngest Luthor into a warm hug. "I think we're past the formalities point, don't you? Unless you want me to address you as Ms. Luthor?" she asked, chuckling. 

"I- no, of course not, Eliza. Sorry, it's a force of habit," Lena recovered quickly. 

"No, don't apologize – it's fine." Mama Danvers released Lena with a smile and then went to hug Kara next, who had come up for her turn. "Kara." 

"Hi, Eliza," the younger Danvers said with a tight squeeze. "While I'm sure it'll lead to you telling Lena a lot more embarrassing stories about me, I'm really glad you're in National City now." 

"I'm glad I'm here now too – and I'm so glad I didn't miss the start of this," Eliza replied, glancing between the two younger women. 

Lena and Kara both blushed brightly, and both started trying to say something but neither managed to get anything coherent out. Eliza decided to interrupt their attempts by ushering them all over to the couch. 

When they'd finally sat down, Lena tried again. "That wasn't ... exactly the start of this," she said, a bit hesitantly. 

Kara laughed nervously. "Yeah ... I mean, Lena's been flirting pretty hard with me for a while now." 

Lena sat upright and looked at Kara in shock. "You mean you knew I was flirting with you??" She fell back against the back of the couch with a groan. "This whole time I thought you hadn't realized it – I mean, not until ...," Lena trailed off and gestured weakly to Kara's wrist. 

"Well," Kara said, this time even more nervously, "I mean, at first I didn't, it sorta took me a while." 

"When did you realize it? Was it me filling your office full of flowers?" Lena asked, grinning and bumping her shoulder against Kara's playfully. "I did notice that you started visiting me a lot more after that." 

Kara blushed bright red, and Lena guessed that the answer might have been 'no' still at that point. 

"Kara!" Eliza said, almost sounding affronted by her adopted daughter's obliviousness. 

The younger Danvers started fidgeting awkwardly, and Lena decided to try and put her more at ease by scooping up Kara's hand in hers and kissing it. It worked and Kara was instead suddenly distracted by Lena's lips – and _whoops_ , ok that was too much. To try and detour before something unfortunate happened, like accidentally making out with this cute blonde in front of her adopted mother, Lena turned to Eliza. 

"So, Dr.- I mean, Eliza," Lena started, clearing her throat, "did you just come here to track down your daughter? Or was there something you needed from me?" 

Dr. Danvers smiled, probably recognizing the course correction for what it was. "I actually came here to see you, Lena. You can only hole yourself up with work for so long at a time." 

Lena winced. "Let me guess, you've been talking to Jess?" 

"Sort of – this isn't the first time this week I've tried to stop by to say hello." 

The youngest Luthor nodded and smiled lopsidedly. "In my defense, this week has been unusually busy." 

"And the week before," Kara said with her eyebrows raised at Lena, leaning on her girlfriend. 

"And the week before," Lena admitted in defeat, sighing. 

"And the week before that," Kara continued in the same tone. 

"And the week- Kara!" Lena stopped herself just in time and turned to fix Kara with a look, raising her index finger in warning. "That was for you, and I refuse to regret it." 

"Hmmm," was all Kara said in response, and then before Lena could realize what she was doing, Kara ducked in and kissed her girlfriend on the cheek softly. "I would have rather gotten to spend more time with you." Instead of pulling back all the way, Kara stayed against Lena's cheek and nuzzled against her. 

Lena turned bright red at this display of affection in front of Kara's basically-mom, but couldn't really make herself pull away or ask Kara to stop – especially not when it was so nice – and the youngest Luthor melted into her superhero's touch. 

Before they could get too carried away, Eliza cleared her throat. "Well, I think I should probably head back and let you two get your time together," she said, moving to stand up. 

"Wait," Lena said, reaching a hand out to stop her. "I'm sorry we didn't get to talk more, and I do want to spend more time with you and get to know you better. It's just ... this is still so new for us, we haven't gotten a handle on it yet," she said apologetically, still sporting a light blush. 

"Oh, I understand how it is, and actually I'm kind of glad I'm getting an opportunity to see how you are together now before you learn how to guard your responses in front of others." Eliza's eyes crinkled in genuine amusement. "It lets me see how much you care for each other. But," Eliza warned, with a finger held aloft, "I'm going to hold you to the promise of spending more time together. And that goes for you too, Kara," she added, directing her admonitory finger at Kara next. "I want to spend time with all my girls." 

With that, Eliza swept out the door with a quick, "See you later, girls!" over her shoulder. 

Lena was still a little stunned from the implication that she was one of Mama Danvers' 'girls' that she wanted to spend time with, so when Kara turned to look at her girlfriend, the superhero-incognito saw the almost disbelieving smile and warm blush dusting her cheeks. 

"Aww," Kara said, wrapping her arms around Lena. "See? I knew she would like you." 

Lena could only respond by returning Kara's hug and just holding her, not trusting herself to speak. It had been a very long time since she had personally experienced any positive motherly behavior, and it was a little overwhelming. 

After a while, the youngest Luthor felt able to speak again, and she had a question she really wanted to ask. 

"Kara ... the cultural significance of bracelets on Krypton was a little hard to match up to Earth customs, but ... does this make us girlfriends? Or maybe dating? I'm fairly certain it's not the same as a marriage proposal – I mean, not like getting down on one knee with a ring. I wasn't sure if I was quite ready for that yet," she laughed nervously. She realized she was rambling, but was having trouble stopping herself. 

Kara leaned forward to kiss Lena briefly as a way of stopping her. Distantly Lena noted that it was extremely successful maneuver, and resolved to remember that for the future when she needed to stop Kara from rambling. When it seemed like Lena wasn't going to try rambling any more – and Kara was previously unaware that Lena could even ramble but it was _adorable_ – Kara said, "I ... well, the way it was used on Krypton really doesn't work here. There aren't any formal Earth courtship customs that I'm aware of. But yeah, it would be like dating or being girlfriends." 

"Ok," Lena nodded seriously, "then I want to clarify for the record that I want you as my girlfriend." She took Kara's hand and clasped it to her chest as she looked at her hopefully-girlfriend. "Will you be my girlfriend?" 

Kara blushed and laughed happily at the same time, and answered Lena with a kiss. It didn't have the intense all-consuming passion of their first two kisses, but was still much less chaste than what they'd done while Eliza was here. Lena pulled back after a bit. 

"Kara, another thing – about what Eliza said about wanting to see all her girls ... I'm guessing she might try to drop in for lunches more often, which is great and I'll be glad to see her, but I don't want to miss my time with just you, so ... I guess what I'm trying to say is, will you come home with me?" Kara's only response was to blink. "And I don't just mean tonight but every night, whenever you can and don't have other things to take care of." 

Kara opened and closed her mouth a few times like a fish. 

"And I don't mean for sex but for seeing each other, getting to have dinner together and cuddling together on the couch, and waking up curled next to you in the morning and having a cup of coffee together before we both have to go to work. It'll make it easier to free up time to spend with other people like Eliza that way, and you can still come see me on my lunches and we can try to go out on the weekend, but ... I mean, I've gotten to spend what, forty whole minutes maximum in your company since I gave you that bracelet? And that's not enough." 

Kara had been melting more and more as Lena explained what exactly she wanted, so when she finally seemed to stop her rambling – for the second time in five minutes! – all Kara wanted to do was wrap Lena in her arms and never let go. 

"Yes," Kara breathed, smiling widely, "I'd love to. I mean, sometimes we'll probably have to go back to my place too." 

"Ok good, and it's a deal," Lena said smiling in relief. "And it feels like we're doing this kind of backwards, but I promise you that as soon as I can get all this work under control that I'm going to take you on an incredible number of dates." 

Kara just laughed as an answer, scooping up Lena in her arms. 

\---- 

The next day, Lena went to go put a standing lunch date on her calendar with Jess and found out from her assistant that Dr. Danvers had already asked to be informed of the days whenever Kara wasn't in Lena's office for lunch, causing Lena to laugh and blush. Since Kara wasn't able to do lunch today, she had Jess check if Eliza wanted to start with lunch today.


	9. Someone's wearing the 'getting laid' dress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY a date night!

When six o'clock rolled around the next day, Lena hung up from a video conference call to find a certain superhero hanging out on her office balcony.

"I didn't want to risk having them see me coming through your door," the blonde said by way of explanation, strolling in through the balcony door.

"Supergirl, aren't you here a bit early?" Lena asked, arching an eyebrow. "Did you get bored patrolling the city?"

Kara put her hands on her hips said sternly, "This is the normal clock-out time for office workers – and I know for a fact that you start work really early, too, so you can't tell me that you haven't already worked your eight hours today."

Lena laughed. "Kara, my workday isn't eight hours," she said as if that would be obvious.

Supergirl huffed. "I know, but it should be!" She walked over to stand behind Lena, looking over her shoulder at what she was working on. "Come on, what here absolutely needs to be done tonight and can't wait till tomorrow?"

"Kara, I can't just stop at six. I have way too much to do!"

"And those things can wait till tomorrow, can't they?" the superhero grinned, knowing she had caught the CEO when she hadn't mentioned anything specific that couldn't wait.

"I– you can't– Kara, you– ...."

Grinning triumphantly, Kara strode to the door and pulled it open, calling loudly, "Jess!"

Jess startled and let out a loud squawk. "Oh my god, Supergirl – you have to warn a girl before jumping out like that," she said, holding a hand to her chest.

"You mean maybe like ... knocking?" the superhero said, wiggling her eyebrows.

In answer Jess just threw a balled-up piece of paper at her. "Now, what did you want before you decided to give me a heart attack?"

"How hard is it going to be to clear up Lena's schedule after 6pm every day?" Supergirl asked, walking up to the assistant's desk.

Jess gave the hero an unimpressed look and snorted, raising up one eyebrow. "Just whose assistant do you think you're talking to? I do more drastic changes to Ms. Luthor's schedule with way less advance notice nearly every day – changing her daily end time is a piece of cake."

"Great! Thanks Jess."

Lena came striding out her office. "No, don't reschedule my days, Jess."

Jess held up her hands. "Sorry Ms. Luthor, I have to listen to Supergirl. I'm pretty sure it's written into my contract somewhere."

After some wrangling, Lena managed to get Kara to agree to a half hour more so she could clear things up before they left, persuading her girlfriend that Lena hadn't ordered the important tasks first because she assumed she still had time.

"But only this once," Supergirl said, index finger raised in warning.

The CEO wasn't sure how exactly she did it, but she managed to get at least an hour's worth of work packed into those thirty minutes. When they got back to Lena's apartment – her heart racing from the flying again, she wasn't sure how she would ever get used to that – Lena decided to make them go out on a last minute date since they were off so early. Their first official romantic date.

She shooed Kara off to her own house to get ready with strict instructions to wait there to be picked up by car, and then Lena simultaneously dug through her closet for a dress and tried to pick a restaurant. There were several nice places that could get her a table simply because she was an investor or she outright owned the restaurant – the youngest Luthor would sometimes buy the place up or invest when Lena really liked them. She could also try one of the newer fancy-dress restaurants in National City that she hadn't been to yet.

Lena pursed her lips, and went instead for a third option. She dialed a number on set it on speaker phone while she pulled out a couple dresses to look at.

Her assistant answered the phone on the second ring with a terse, "I hope you're not working."

"No, but you owe me."

Jess sighed. "What do you need?"

"I'm taking Kara out for a date tonight and I want you to find us a table someplace that I'll probably like with a reservation at ... let's say, in an hour to an hour and a half. That should give us enough time to get ready and get there."

Jess waited a beat, then asked, "Ms. Luthor ... Supergirl hauled you out of your office early, but you're taking _Kara_ out on a date?"

_Shit._

Lena scrambled to say something believable. "Well," she said, trying to clear any trace of panic out of her voice, "I can't exactly drag Supergirl into a fancy restaurant. Her supersuit probably doesn't pass the dress code." She silently hoped that Jess hadn't noticed the significant pause before she responded.

"Hmm," said her assistant.

 _Damn_ , Jess had definitely noticed that. Lena had only known about Supergirl's identity for a few days, less than a week, and she was already leaking it. She was officially failing as a girlfriend to a superhero and she'd only just started.

"Well," Jess continued, as if she hadn't stopped, "I'm pretty sure I can get you in at the newest Italian restaurant that just opened last month."

"La Tagliatella?" she asked, recalling the name in the news. "That's fine, and if not them, then any place that will give me an excuse to make Kara dress up would be fine."

"Yes, Ms. Luthor. I'll let you know what I find," she said, and then remembering something, she added, "Oh, and my vote is on the little black dress you wore to the Wayne black tie gala two years ago." Then Jess promptly hung up.

Lena blinked and then sighed. She swore her assistant was growing more confident and ballsy all the time. At this rate, if she didn't give Jess a more senior position soon, Lena would be CEO in name only. Jess probably could do PR or CTO, Lena mused as she dug through her closet.

Just to see what she thought, Lena pulled out the dress that Jess had suggested, holding it up against herself in the mirror in her walk-in closet. She remembered the event she'd bought it for clearly. She was annoyed with Bruce Wayne for being so insistent that Lena just _had_ to dance with him if she came to his gala, and it wasn't like she could skip go ing to the gala – LuthorCorp was still trying to pick up the pieces after the horrors caused by her brother, and the company needed their new CEO to show the world that she wasn't afraid of showing her face. So Lena had dressed to the nines with this dress and perfect everything, but had refused to so much as make conversation with Wayne _at his own party_ just to show him she wasn't to be messed with. If the youngest Luthor were being honest with herself, she'd probably gone a little overboard, but she didn't regret even a bit of it.

Looking at the dress now, she could admit that it was unrelentingly sexy – but Lena didn't want to make Kara's head explode just yet. This would definitely have to be a fourth or fifth date.

Well. Unless Lena wanted to get laid tonight.

It wasn't like they were _really_ on a first date. The youngest Luthor had known Kara for months now and had in fact been inviting her to dinner and lunch dates during most of that time. The fact that the blonde hadn't known at the time that they were dates didn't really matter all _that_ much. And they had already hit first base a few times now, albeit only very recently.

Ok, Lena decided, little black dress it was.

Laying the dress over the back of a chair, Lena glanced at the clock to make sure she was still running on time, and went to bathroom to do her makeup and hair. She didn't know if she should do her hair up or down, but she ended up going for up on the grounds that it looked cleaner. She did her makeup significantly more casual than her 'dressed to kill' mode she'd used at the Wayne gala, using a softer look to moderate the sexiness of the dress a little – after all, they both needed to make it through dinner and possibly drinks afterward.

When the CEO was just putting on the finishing touches, Jess called back with success on the Italian restaurant – although apparently she'd had to wrangle things to manage it, something about the restaurant not being happy to serve a Luthor. Lena sighed. Her family always seemed to pop up and make things worse as soon as Lena felt like she was onto something good.The youngest Luthor just thanked whatever deities might exist that at least her family hadn't managed to scare Kara off. She figured if kidnappings and experiments and wanton destruction hadn't scared the blond reporter off already, then nothing her family did would. And honestly, that was a refreshing change for Lena.

She finished her makeup and slid into her dress, noting that it still fit as well as it did two years ago. Lena made a mental note to call up her old personal trainer again now that she was going to have more free time in the evenings, because she'd probably need it if she was going to be eating even more junk food on a regular basis with Kara. She called up her superhero girlfriend while she transferred things to her black clutch.

When she picked up – on the first ring no less, and Lena wondered if the hero had used her superspeed to grab the phone – Lena said, "Ok, I hope you like Italian, because I've got reservations in an hour." Kara's enthusiastic yes made her laugh, and the CEO continued. "Are you ready to go? Because I'm leaving now to pick you up." There was some muffled sounds like Kara had moved the phone around, but she said yes, so Lena said her goodbye and went down to where her driver was waiting for her.

––

"Alex! You gotta help me, this is an emergency!" Kara said urgently into the phone.

Her sister groaned, saying, "Kara, helping you get ready for a date is not an emergency."

"J'onn will understand, and it's not like we both won't be called in if something goes wrong anyway," the younger Danvers pleaded. "Oh come on, pleeeeeaaaase Alex??"

"Fine," Alex sighed. "I'll be right over." Then she hung up.

By the time Alex got there, Kara had laid practically her entire wardrobe over the bed – or at least the clothes that weren't cardigans and slacks. "Kara, it's one single night – you're not packing for a trip," she said, mildly exasperated as she dug through the piles.

"I know I know, but I just wanted to see everything," the younger woman said, running her hands through her hair.

"Ok, first, stop messing up your hair – have you even done it yet? No? Ok, go do your hair. I'll lay out some options for you." Alex looked down at the immense pile Kara had amassed. She started rejecting dresses and putting them up on Kara's clothes rack as she went through the pile. A small number of dresses went onto the other end of the rack as 'keepers', which she gradually swapped out to the rejects as she came across better dresses hidden in the pile.

When she'd gone through three quarters of the dresses on the bed and had found three nice ones that would be good for this sort of date, Kara came back out with her hair done up and curled.

"Ok," said Alex, not wasting any time, "I've got three choices for you, so pick a color – blue, burgundy, or dark green with shimmer." She showed each of the dresses as she announced the color.

"Ok ummmm," Kara hummed, thinking. "I like that green one, but I think the burgundy is better today."

"Congratulations Contestant #3, you have picked the 'getting laid' dress," Alex said in a mock announcer's voice, brandishing the dress for Kara with a flourish.

Kara said in dismay, "Oh my god, Alex."

"What? You totally know this is a getting laid dress, cuz that's why you picked it. And for a first-ish date, too – someone's feeling cocky." She gave her little sister an assessing look and raised an eyebrow.

Spluttering and turning bright red, Kara retreated to the bathroom to do her makeup now that she knew the color of the dress. She grabbed the lipstick that was that same red as the dress and started applying everything.

"Sooo ...."

Kara noticed Alex had come into the bathroom with her and was leaning against the doorway. "If you make me nervous and mess up my makeup I'm going to be really angry with you," the younger Danvers said quickly to head off whatever comment her sister was intending to make.

Alex held up her hands in mock surrender, but Kara didn't trust it one bit – Alex seemed too amused by something, although she wasn't being too obvious about it.

Tone idle while she adjusted the towels on a nearby shelf, Alex asked slowly, "Are you going back to her place tonight?"

The brush in Kara's hand paused mid-stroke. "... I'm not going to answer that question," she said after a while. When it seemed like her older sister wasn't going to be saying anything else for a bit, Kara went back to applying her makeup.

Thankfully, before Alex could say anything else, Lena called. Kara dashed out of the bathroom with superspeed to grab it, her sister calling after her, "Don't superspeed or it'll mess up your hair!" The conversation was brief – Lena just wanted to warn her that she was on her way.

Alex came out and looked at her younger sister, just standing there smiling at the phone in her hands after hanging up. The elder Danvers rolled her eyes and took hold of Kara's arm to drag her back into the bathroom. "C'mon, let's finish this and fix your hair."

Kara relented and let her sister help, and by the time Lena texted to say that she was arriving, Kara was ready to go.

"Now," Alex said, leaning out the door after her sister, "do you need me to come down there and tell her to bring you back by your curfew or else?"

Kara rolled her eyes and started walking down the hall. "Good night, Alex."

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do!" her big sister called after her.

Kara just shook her head and hit the close button on the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WWAD = What Would Alex Do
> 
> For readers confused about which of one of the SuperCorp pair I was referring to with the chapter title (Someone's wearing the 'getting laid' dress), the answer is: both of them.
> 
> ALSO: There is going to be a sex scene in a couple chapters, and I'm not really sure where to put it. Should the sex scene:  
> A) be its own work and I link to it?  
> B) Just upgrade the rating on the story and imbed (ha!) the sex scene in the chapter naturally? (For this option I would probably put some kind of visual marker like ******** before and after the scene to mark it.)  
> C) Upgrade the rating on the story but put the sex scene in its own chpt?
> 
> So many options! Cannot decide!


	10. Appetizers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, it sounds like the resounding winner is option B, sex scene in-line with the rest of the story. It should happen in the next chapter or two (depending on where the chapter cuts fall). This will get bumped up to probably Explicit rating shortly.  
> \--

One good thing came with Alex's teasing though – Kara hadn't been nervous during the banter with her sister. Now that the teasing had stopped, Kara could feel herself getting more and more anxious as she rode the elevator down. Fortunately she didn't have far to go, and she stepped out of the doors to see an expensive-looking black car with a man in a driver's uniform standing next to it. Guessing that was the one, she approached.

"Ms. Danvers?" the driver confirmed, then opened the door for her. She thanked him and sat down, letting the driver shut the door for her, only then turning to see the sight that greeted her.

Lena.

The CEO was wearing a black cocktail dress that had what seemed like mesh over certain parts and Kara felt her brain start to short circuit as she tried to process exactly how amazing her girlfriend looked. Then Kara remembered that this woman was her girlfriend – _her girlfriend_ – and suddenly the car felt really hot and it became a little difficult to breathe.

Lena let the other woman have some time to take in her look. Kara had stepped into the car smiling one of her amazing sunny smiles, and then her jaw had dropped open as soon as she'd seen Lena. It was doing a lot to calm Lena's nerves to see just how much she affected her girlfriend. Looking back at Kara was doing something to Lena, too – she could feel her heart racing and her mouth go dry.

"Hi," Lena said with a smile to break the building tension.

Kara beamed back at her. "Hi wow you look so amazing," she answered a little bit breathlessly, her eyes very briefly dipping back down to the dress and everything that it did – or didn't – cover.

Lena smiled widely before complimenting Kara, relishing the blush she got from the praise. She stayed to relatively tame comments the whole way to the restaurant to avoid keying either one or both of them up too much – she had already noticed Kara's eyes dipping down Lena's body several times and she really wanted to make it through the dinner. If the CEO flirted it might just be too much.

The driver dropped them off at the front of the restaurant, and they walked up the beautifully worn stone steps to the impressive entrance, which had crawling vines draped over the upper part of the building. Lena couldn't see tables, but it looked like the top floor was an open-air dining area, and that was where the vines came from. The CEO wondered where exactly their reservation was – knowing Jess, she'd have gotten the best available, but who knows what was still available at that late hour.

The waiting and reception area just inside the doors was well-furnished, and the rest of the dining area was almost completely hidden from view from the front, which gave Lena hope that they'd be well secluded, no matter what table they had. The host at reception smiled and greeted them with a somewhat obsequious smile. When she gave the name 'Lena Luthor', the man's eyes widened briefly but he hid it quickly.

"Just a moment and I'll get your server," he said with a bow and then swiftly disappeared into the restaurant.

Lena turned to her girlfriend while they were waiting and took her hand. "What do you think?"

"It looks amazing," Kara said, eyes taking in the entryway. She was blushing a little from the hand-holding, but didn't want to let go. "I like all the plants."

"I do, too," confessed Lena. "This place is really popular right now and it just opened, so we were really lucky to get a table last minute."

"It looks expensive, too."

"Well, it's my treat this time – remember, I'm rich so you don't have to worry about the price. You can take me out somewhere next time."

"Ok," Kara said, not sounding completely convinced. "I bet the food is just as good at my favorite place that's super cheap _and_ has family-sized portions."

Lena laughed and squeezed her girlfriend's hand. "Just don't let the restaurateurs hear you say that or they'll be really offended."

"Ok," agreed the blonde, ducking her head a little sheepishly.

"Ms.?" The host had returned. "I'm so sorry to keep you waiting – this is your server, Tamara." He gestured to the woman next to him. "She'll take you to your table. Please enjoy your meal."

"Thank you," Lena said, smiling warmly. It was probably this man that Jess had had to harass to get them a table, so it couldn't hurt to be nice. She turned and followed the server, Kara staying at her side so they could still hold hands.

Tamara smiled at them as she led them around crawling vine-covered partitions, only revealing brief glimpses of the other diners as they passed. "We have you on the top floor, so we'll take the elevator up."

"Excellent, thank you," Lena replied, a genuinely pleased smile on her face. It would be highly inappropriate to pump her fist, so Lena settled instead for squeezing Kara's hand and smiling at her girlfriend. The blonde beamed back at her and – well, maybe 'settle' wasn't the proper word for it. No, definitely not. She was glad Tamara was mostly looking forward so the woman didn't see Lena's blush.

When they got into the elevator – which had been covered in a stone facing that made it look reminiscent of a rural Tuscan villa – Lena decided to try and make some small talk with the server, otherwise she would just stare at Kara. While they were all stuck in an enclosed space together it felt a bit rude to do that. Luthors were always smooth in social functions, so this really was second nature to Lena.

"So you haven't been open long, isn't that right? A month or so?" She asked, turning to face Tamara.

The redhead server nodded, answering, "Basically. It's been about a month and a half now, but we were open for a month before that, prepping staff and pitching to investors."

"Ah, and who are the investors? If you know, I mean. I think Bianchi, Ltd., seem to do a lot of restaurant investments, I guess it might be them."

The server winced. "Don't mention that name once we're out of the elevator, actually. Apparently there was some bad blood when the current owners left Metropolis before the end of their contract. It took them a couple years before they could even get back into the business, and I guess they resent that."

The elevator doors slid open, and they stepped out into the cool air of the rooftop patio.

"It's just a family that runs it – two brothers and aunt – and they have a couple angel investors."

They wandered through the dividers and plants to the corner that looked out in the general direction of the river. Jess got them the best table it looked like – Lena wasn't sure how, but she guessed she probably dropped a bunch of money on it.

Tamara swiftly pulled out both chairs for them and grabbed some elegant-looking menus while she waited for them to sit down. Once she'd passed the menus over, she asked for their preference of either red or white. Kara looked momentarily and adorably confused until Lena said 'wine' in a low voice. Lena picked white to keep her palate clear, and Kara went for the same.

They looked over the menus as their server ducked away and promptly reappeared to fill their wine glasses – starting with Lena to let her sample the wine first. When Lena nodded her approval after tasting, Tamara filled up both her and Kara's glasses, then disappeared again.

Kara took a sip of hers, and her eyes flew open. "Wow," she said, "this is good wine."

"Well have as much as you'd like, I'm pretty sure we've already bought the bottle – and I don't have to worry about you getting overly drunk on me," she said smirking, glancing up at Kara before returning to her menu. She tapped her finger against the corner of it as she studied it. "I think the way things work here is that you order a main course, and then they give you everything else paired with it, from appetizers to drinks to dessert."

"Oh, well that makes it easier, doesn't it," Kara said, setting down her glass to look back at the menu.

Lena smiled, "Yes, I think that's why they do it, so people don't have to spend so much time picking things out and can enjoy the rest of the time with their company and good food." Her eyes crinkled in amusement.

After a while, Kara spoke up again. "There are so many things here that look good – I can't really decide."

Having already decided, Lena set her menu down on the table. "You know you can try a few of them, right? I know you eat a lot of food."

"It's alright. Besides, I have to save some space for dessert," Kara said, dithering.

Lena looked shocked. "Have you ever _not_ had space for dessert?"

"Well, ... no," Kara admitted.

Humming thoughtfully, Lena suggested, "Why don't you take advantage of this opportunity and try some different ones? Maybe go for three?" Lena was fairly certain her girlfriend could eat more than three meals, but thought it might embarrass her too much to suggest more. "And then I can try several things."

Kara was torn – she didn't want to order that much, but Lena was offering. "Ok," she said finally, "how about two?"

"Deal," Lena said promptly, glad she'd been able to convince her to get more. She'd have to work on conquering that fear.

Their server chose that moment to reappear. "Are you ladies ready to order?"

"I am," Lena said, "but my date might need a bit of help."

Kara felt a thrill run through her when Lena said 'date'. "Oh! Uh ...." She crinkled her forehead in thought and looked down at the menu.

"Perhaps you can offer some suggestions?" Lena asked, looking at Tamara.

Nodding, the red-haired server asked, "Alright, what kinds of Italian food do you like?"

"Um, well, pretty much everything, but my favorites are gnocchi, lasagna, pizza ...." Kara listed things off on her fingers.

Tamara's brow creased slightly at the last one, and Lena had to cover up a smile with her hand.

"Kara, pizza is more American food than Italian food. They might not have that here."

"Oh," the superhero-incognito said, surprised. "Ummm ...."

Lena turned to the server again. "Can you suggest anything? Maybe whatever is popular, or maybe your personal favorite?"

The server blinked. "Well, my personal favorite is the fettucini al cachiatore, but we also have two types of gnocchi and three lasagnas."

" _Three_ lasagnas, wow," Kara said, and Lena could almost see her drooling already.

"Which is the best lasagna and the best gnocchi?" Lena asked.

"The cavatelli for the gnocchi – it's a variation, and the veal lasagna."

"Those are both very filling, aren't they?"

"Yes, very."

Lena looked over at Kara with her eyebrows raised, as if urging her on. Since she needed a moment, Lena placed her own order, and then Kara after a momentary hesitation nodded and said, "I'll have both of those you suggest then."

Tamara started and looked at Kara in surprise.

"I'm pretty hungry – and we wanted to sample few different dishes," she said, blushing a bit, and eagerly using the excuse Lena had come up with earlier.

The server recovered her professional manner – she'd probably had weirder requests – and said she'd be back with their appetizers shortly.

Lena sighed contentedly and lifted her glass to take a sip, enjoying the view of the city skyline and river. "It's such a beautiful night." The CEO heard a scraping sound then and looked back at the table.

Kara had shifted her chair around the table and was now sitting more or less on the same side of the table as her girlfriend, but with enough space for plates. The table was a bit overlarge for two people, probably a good thing since Kara had ordered two dishes. Now though, Kara was close enough to comfortably take Lena's hand, and she did so with a smile.

"It is," Kara agreed, although she said so while staring at Lena, implying that she wasn't talking about the view of the skyline.

Lena blushed, but brought Kara's hand to her lips for a quick kiss – noting that her lipstick wasn't rubbing off at all on her girlfriend's skin. Good. "Don't go full Casanova on me just yet – we need to get through dinner still," Lena chided gently, eyes twinkling in amusement.

"Deal," Kara replied playfully. "We get through desserts, and _then_ full Casanova. Got it." She nodded decisively, making Lena chuckle.

They started talking about some of the articles that Kara was working on, and then their server plus two assistants arrived with their appetizers. A young man helped Tamara spread them out on the table while another woman poured a sample of a new wine for Lena. The CEO nodded and the three disappeared again with a murmured, "Please let us know if you need anything else."

The two girlfriends chatted while picking over the appetizers. Lena was growing steadily more and more amused as Kara declared each new thing she tried as "the most amazing thing she'd ever tasted."

"Kara, you're supposed to make the appetizers last – they have to cook our meals still."

Her girlfriend looked a little sheepish, but only slowed down slightly, exclaiming with her mouth still half-full, "Ok yeah, but I'm hungry!" She emphasized the point by picking something else up to put in her mouth.

Lena laughed then, utterly carefree and happy, and leaned over to peck her girlfriend on the cheek. Only then did Kara pause to actually thoroughly chew and swallow, blushing brightly. The youngest Luthor had hardly touched her side of the appetizers, and Kara tried to encourage her to eat more. When Lena continued to express her desire to wait for the main course, and that she wasn't that hungry, the superhero decided to take that moment to run down to the restroom before diving into the last bits. At least that way Kara could say she made the appetizers last.


	11. Much gushing about her girlfriend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, I misjudged the distance to sexytimes. There are still two chapters including this one before we get there, because this date is a bit long. But I try to make up for that in cute :}  
> \----

Kara took the elevator down to the first floor and avoided the areas where she could hear people eating, and found herself back at the entrance. Slightly embarrassed, she asked where the restroom was, and the host felt bad for her and led her there himself. The inside of the restrooms were just as elegant as the rest of the restaurant, and Kara was surprised and a bit confused when she walked all the way in to find an attendant inside.

"Uhhh, this is the women's restroom, right?" the blonde reporter stopped to ask, thinking that maybe she'd wandered into an employee area. The attendant explained to her that she was there to help with anything she needed, including face towels, perfume, and any feminine products.

Kara confessed that this was her first time in a restaurant this high class and started chatting a little with the woman, finding out more about the restaurant and what she thought of the job, before the superhero incognito realized that she needed to get back. She excused herself and quickly took care of her needs, before wandering back out of the bathroom only to realize she didn't know how to get back to the elevator from here. After quickly conferring with the ladies' room attendant, she set out again.

––

Shortly after Kara left to go find the bathroom, Tamara returned with the first course, but found only one of the pair at the table. Lena insisted that she leave what was left of the appetizers on the table – she said that her girlfriend was like a human vacuum cleaner when it came to food anyway – and then there was an awkward moment silence while the redhaired server stood waiting for the blonde to return before she served the first course.

When Cam, the host, had told her who she would serving, the redhead admitted that she had been incredibly nervous to be serving the reportedly richest woman in National City. After meeting the woman and her date though, and interacting with them on the way to their table, she realized the youngest Luthor was not nearly as scary as Tamara had been expecting, and had relaxed considerably after that.

Tamara Castaneda had been in this job for a while now in various restaurants, and decided that conversation might be a good time killer, since Lena Luthor had been friendly with her so far. The couple were obviously very affectionate, so the server guessed that the missing blonde – who she suspected was a girlfriend or wife – would be a safe topic to talk about while they waited. She'd found that couples tended to gush about their partners, and it turned out to be true enough for Lena Luthor, too. Given as slight an invitation as 'she seems like a lovely person', the rich debutante was off to the races, telling Tamara just how wonderful her girlfriend was. The server didn't have to fake her warm smile – it was genuinely cute to see such a powerful woman gushing about her girl to a relative nobody. Her girlfriend also seemed to be a truly nice person, too, from what little Tamara had overheard.

Tamara asked how long they had been together, assuming that they were longtime partners, and was surprised to find that they hadn't even been together a week.

"Wow," the redhead server exclaimed. She didn't even know what to say.

"Admittedly, we've been close friends for months now, and we were sort of dating before this, but platonically?" The dark-haired woman tilted her head with her brow furrowed slightly, trying to explain. She smiled then. "It's actually a funny story. I've been trying to get her to think of me as a love interest for a _long_ time," she recalled, putting extra emphasis on the 'long', "and only recently did the message get through."

Tamara chuckled. "So you were basically dating before, that explains it. You don't act like a new couple, if you don't mind my saying so."

Lena waved her acceptance of the comment. "You know," she started, her eyes twinkling with mischief, "I filled her office with flowers? Not once but three times? And she _still_ didn't realize it."

The server choked. "What?? Wow! And what finally did the trick if that didn't?"

"Ah well," Lena said, treading more carefully now. "That was a bit of a cultural snafu – I basically almost proposed to her accidentally. She's not from here, but she came over at 13 so she doesn't have an accent, but sometimes, like with this, I'm reminded that she has a different background."

"Where is she from?" came the innocent follow-up question.

"I don't know exactly – she doesn't like to talk about it – but somewhere in eastern Europe I think. She was a refugee and basically her entire family died except herself and one cousin. She's such a sunny person that it's hard to remember that there's so much sadness in her past." Lena smiled as she moved into more happy memories. "She has so much warmth to give that it was kind of overwhelming at first, and I thought she couldn't possibly be real." She took a drink of wine then and looked off into the middle distance. "I never thought such a warm person could ever love someone like me."

Tamara was stunned at that – the realization hitting her exactly who she was talking to, that Lena Luthor's brother and mother were both infamous criminals. The server didn't know what to say, so stayed silent.

––

Kara had definitely gotten turned around, and she found herself back by the kitchen. She stopped to ask a passing uniformed person, who the blond hero guessed was staff, for directions back to the elevator when she heard someone say the name Luthor behind her, and she turned around. There were two men arguing in low tones, but with Kara's superhearing she could easily hear them. The one in kitchen whites seemed to be refusing to make the order for a Luthor, and the other man, who was dressed like a manager, was trying to convince him. The reporter stepped closer.

"I swore I would never serve anyone in that family of demons, and I won't budge," the cook said firmly.

"Antonin, you know how much power she has in this city – a bad word from her could shut us down. And after all the work we did to get this opened? Just make the damn food."

"No, we left Metropolis to get away from them, after what that bald monster did ...," the cook paused then to get control of his emotions, taking a deep breath, "after that, I just couldn't stay."

Kara felt she had to step in.

"Excuse me," she said stepping closer, smiling politely. Both men immediately cleared their expressions and looked up at her, the tension in the air dissipating as if never was. If Kara hadn't heard and seen them arguing just moments before, she would have been convinced by this act that nothing was the matter.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear ... you know Lena is not her brother, right?" The cook's expression immediately shifted back to a scowl. "Look, I know what her brother did was awful – trust me, I know, he nearly killed my cousin, the only family I have left – but imagine that this awful murderer was not only in the same city as you, but was in your very family." Kara stepped closer, hands gesticulating precisely, trying to express her points. "And you do all you can to try and separate yourself from this awfulness, but it's still part of your family and how can you leave family?

"So she tries to instead use what she has to do good in the world, and try to do what she can to correct what her brother did, because she feels responsible, even by association. And it's something she can never escape as long as she lives, even though she did nothing actually wrong. She beats herself up because she wonders if she could have stopped him if she had just paid a little more attention, if she had talked more with him. I don't know if that's true, but she didn't know at the time what was happening and there's nothing any of us can do to change the past, no matter how much we might wish to."

The cook looked much less belligerent, but wasn't fully convinced. "If that's the case, why does she still have the name? She could have gotten rid of that," he argued.

"Honestly, I think that's just stubbornness on her part. You know both her brother and mother have tried multiple times to assassinate her over the last two years? Since she tried to break away from them, tried to do good? I think she's just trying to tell them that they won't win, that it's _her_ name too, and that she's going to do good with it, no matter what they think."

"Well," the cook spluttered. He put his hands on his hips and glowered. "I have a kitchen to run," was all he said, and spun around and went back into the kitchen.

The other man, the manager, turned to Kara and apologized profusely. "I'm so sorry you had to hear that. He's been very intransigent on that issue for some time, he lost his boyfriend in one of-" the man dropped his voice to nearly a whisper around the name, "Lex Luthor's attacks."

"It's alright," Kara said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. "I understand the sentiment, my cousin has been the same way about it."

The man nodded. "My brother has had his head in the sand about the sister Luthor since coming to National City. I was hoping that finally getting enough investors to open this restaurant would help keep his mind off it, help him heal." He shrugged, still withholding judgement on how successful the attempt had been.

"So you are the owners then?" Kara asked, changing tracks.

The man smiled then, and introduced himself as Giuseppe, suddenly all smooth businessman and restaurateur. "I hope that, other than that outburst, you are enjoying yourself tonight?"

"I am," she confirmed, smiling. "Everything has been excellent so far."

Just then, the brother and head chef reappeared at the entrance to the kitchen. "Does she like bell peppers?" he asked bluntly, without preamble. When both his brother and Kara simply stared at him, he clarified. "It's just I have a garlic and bell pepper sauce, and some people don't like it so I wanted to ask so I wouldn't have to send it out for nothing," he finished grumpily, frowning intensely – but Kara could see the cracks in his act.

The blonde reporter smiled and answered, "Yes, I believe she does."

The chef simply grunted and disappeared back into the kitchen, apparently having felt that he'd already spoken plenty for this interaction.

Kara startled then. "Oh! I have to get back, I didn't think I would be gone this long."

The co-owner smiled and sent her off with directions and his wish that she enjoy the rest of her evening. Kara dashed back to the elevator.


	12. Melted pile of super gay gooeyness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> T-minus-one chapter till sexytimes.

Kara hurried back to the table, having just missed the comments about her from Lena.

The CEO smiled when she walked up. "Did you get lost, Kara?" she asked teasingly as her girlfriend plopped herself back down in her chair. Their server Tamara wasted no time laying out the first actual course for them – or two first courses, in the case of Kara.

The blonde chuckled, embarrassed. "Yeah, I did – three times I think. This place is huge! Oh, and I met the brothers that own this place, and there was this attendant in the restroom so I had to ask how things were done, and then I just completely lost track of time." She grabbed her girlfriend's hand by way of apology.

Lena pulled the hero's hand up to her lips and kissed it, before releasing it so the other woman could eat, saying, "It's fine – don't worry, Kara. You weren't gone that long."

Kara smiled and started bolting down the rest of appetizers – Lena had to assure her that no one would be taking them away before she would eat slower. Tamara had already disappeared again.

"I just don't want them to get cold," she replied with a blush.

Changing the subject, Lena asked, "So you met the owners, what were they like?"

"Well," Kara said, pausing slightly in her eating, "one of them was really nice and friendly, and the other was sort of angry and grumpy. They were arguing a bit when I first saw them, but then I went up and talked to them a bit and the grumpy one seemed to turn around."

"Considering he was faced with one relentlessly sunny Kara Danvers, I'm not at all surprised," Lena affirmed, taking a bite of the delicious salad. "It would take a serious sort of grumpiness to stop you."

"You mean like Snapper?" Kara said with a laugh, and then sighed. "I'm slowing getting to him though. He'll come around I'm sure of it."

"I have complete faith in you," she said fondly. "You are a force to be reckoned with and he won't know what hit him. Although," she amended, holding up her fork to signal her point, "if he _doesn't_ come around, I could just fire him."

"No, Lena, you can't fire him just because he doesn't like me," Kara said in exasperation, giving her girlfriend a look.

"Why? I think it points to faulty judgment – can't have that in an editor in chief."

"I don't know that he actually dislikes me – I have a very strong suspicion that he's like Alex and only has the grumpy exterior to hide that he's really a big softie inside."

"Kara, your sister is only a big softie for you – personally, I find her secret government agent exterior perfectly intimidating."

"Oh, don't be intimidated. Just wait till you see her with her cop girlfriend. She goes from _outwardly tough agent_ ," Kara mimed a tough, arm-crossed Alex at those words, "to this melted pile of super gay gooeyness."

Lena laughed. "I am going to remember forever that you called your tough agent sister a-" Lena made finger quotes around the phrase, "'melted pile of super gay gooeyness'."

Kara set her fork down and looked at Lena anxiously. "You're not going to tell her I said that, are you?"

The CEO made a non-committal sound but didn't look up from her salad, seemingly not paying attention.

"Lena please, no, she's going to _kill_ me." Kara grabbed her girlfriend's hand anxiously to try and persuade her.

"Alright Kara, alright – although I have to say that I'm sure Alex is plenty used to you being _you_ , and saying stuff like that about everyone, including her. That was a very Kara turn of phrase."

Kara gave her a stunningly bright grateful smile, almost making Lena see stars, and went back to polishing off her food. Lena was amused to see that Kara had cleared all the appetizers, one of her two first courses and was just finishing the last bite of the second.

"You still have space, right?"

The blonde smiled at her like that was a silly question, and Lena internally admitted that yes, it probably was. They went back to cuddling a little, watching the skyline and making small talk. Tamara and her assistants popped back in occasionally to refill wine glasses and take away plates.

When Lena picked up her refilled glass, she turned to Kara, who had pulled Lena's other hand into her lap and was playing with it. "Does this wine even affect you?" she asked curiously.

"This? Oh, no not really. I mean, if I drink enough of it fast enough then I can feel more relaxed and get a little buzz, but nothing more than that."

"So you can't get drunk?"

"I can, just ... it has to be special alcohol. Apparently it's deadly to humans." She dropped her voice to almost a whisper on the last sentence and checked over the top of her glasses to make sure no one was listening in.

"Hmm," Lena mused. "I think I might need to find out more about this alcohol and keep some on hand for you."

Kara put a hand to her chest in mock affront. "Lena Lutessa Luthor, are you trying to get me drunk??"

Lena put on a faux innocent look that had to be the most completely not-at-all-believable expression that Kara had ever seen in her life, and the reporter laughed unrestrainedly, throwing her head back and clapping her hands together against her chest. The CEO was entranced by the sight and couldn't seem to breathe or notice anything else. Kara felt her girlfriend's gaze and turned back to find Lena staring at her like Kara was her everything, the hero's chest suddenly feeling tighter.

Tamara with her usual nearly invisible presence appeared with her equally discrete compatriots, and the three of them had the second course set up almost before the two women realized they were there. When the couple's gaze broke, their red-haired server was just leaving. Kara and Lena blinked, recovering themselves with a wry look between them before they accidentally did something they probably shouldn't at a restaurant, like making out passionately on the tabletop. Lena internally reminded herself that she needed to keep her head together or she'd end up doing just that.

A moment later, the servers reappeared with wines, and set an extra glass next to Kara's two plates – two wines paired with two dishes – and poured out a new sample for each of them, paired to their dishes. Lena took hers an sniffed deeply inside the glass before taking a large swallow. The CEO rolled it around her mouth before nodding her acceptance, and then she noted that Kara was only watching her girlfriend instead of sampling her own.

"Kara, you're supposed to try the wine to see if you like it," she directed softly, indicating the two new wine glasses. Her girlfriend made a cute 'oh' with her lips before shifting slightly to pick up a glass and try it.

At Lena's questioning look, she responded, "I ... yes? I mean, I don't really know wines, but I think it's good." Tamara nodded and gestured for her assistants to finish pouring the glasses, then left. Lena was starting to feel fuzzy and estimated that she'd probably had about two or three glasses of wine now. She'd probably need to make sure Kara got most of the rest of the wine or she'd start _really_ having trouble keeping her hands off this cute girlfriend she had.

Kara dove into the main course with gusto, moaning softly with delight at each new thing she tasted. Lena tried to ply a lot of her main course on Kara as well, already starting to feel full by the time the dish had arrived. She had no idea how she was going to make it to dessert if she tried to finish this.

Kara seemed to have no problem tucking it all away, although Lena could see that she was finally slowing down her eating, and the CEO wondered if the superhero was actually starting to get full now. Their servers reappeared to refill wine glasses and take dishes away as Kara finished them – and Lena had to threaten Kara that the servers were going to take the CEO's plate away too, with the food still on it, before the Kryptonian finally gave in and finished off what Lena couldn't eat. The aghast look on Kara's face in response to the youngest Luthor's threat made Lena giggle far too easily and for far too long, reminding the CEO to definitely slow down or stop with the wine.

When Tamara and crew reappeared to remove the plates, Lena asked for some water, which was swiftly provided – Lena guessed that there was a drinks cart just out of sight. A few minutes of cuddling and small talk later, when the servers reappeared with dessert – and an extra person. There, still wearing the same black double-row buttoned chef's coat that Kara had seen him in earlier, was the grumpy brother that Kara had argued with earlier, carrying a plate. The regular servers deposited plates in front of the two diners before he stepped forward, adding this fourth plate to the table.

"You have your regular desserts, but we are trying out some new recipes tonight, and I would like to know your opinion on this one," he said, much more graciously and with a smoother expression than Kara had seen on him before. "And, if you require anything else, please ask Tamara. Enjoy." He ducked back out of sight before either woman could say anything.

Tamara returned to offer them dessert wines and the old glasses were whisked away.

"Well," Kara said, turning to smile first at her girlfriend and then at the mouth-wateringly good-looking array of desserts on the table. "I said I would get the grumpy brother to turn around, didn't I?" She picked up one of the tiny forks to sample the new recipe first, moaning in delight.

"Maybe it's just because you're so obviously appreciative of his food," Lena teased.

"Oh my god! Lena, I know you're just teasing but, oh my god, this dessert is worthy of _worship_ , try it try it try it!" she urged.

Lena laughed and tried it. Her expression shifted to one of surprise. "Ok, I admit that is _really_ good." With Kara urging her onwards, she went around trying the others. "Oh my god, Kara no, I can't eat any more. You're going to have to carry me down to the car at this rate."

When Kara looked up at her like Lena had just given her a unexpected gift, Lena had to quickly backpedal.

"Ok no, you are not allowed to carry me down to the car – no, not even if you pout," she amended, pointing a piece of decadent cake still on the end of her fork at Kara in warning. Kara smiled mischievously and leaned forward to take the piece of cake in her mouth, before turning back to continue her assault on the remaining desserts on the table.

Lena suddenly lost all memory of whatever else she had been about to say, and she simply stared at the lips that she had just seen wrap around the end of her fork, so close to her hands, and that had just nearly ruined her. Kara finished another bite and licked her lips, causing Lena to shiver and glance quickly down at the table then back to her girlfriend. A little breathlessly, Lena said, "I think I want to feed you some more of this dessert, but I also think that would be a very bad idea – my apartment is definitely too far away for that."

The blonde didn't really understand how all those phrases came together to make any sort of sense, and she looked back at her girlfriend in confusion – and was stopped short by the intense, almost hungry expression on Lena's face. She gulped and realized that, yes, Lena's apartment _was_ rather far away.

"Ok," Lena compromised with herself after a moment of thought, "just one." She scooped up a bit of cake with frosting and held it out for Kara, shuddering visibly when the blonde took the bite and then cleaned the fork. She put down fork, breathing deeply. "Alright, I think you have to finish the rest of that yourself or we won't make it home." Lena scooped up her wine glass to take a drink before she remembered that she didn't need more wine. She swapped for the water and made a mental note to try doing the sexual feeding thing again, on a different night, at home.

And with fewer clothes.

The superhero incognito was staring at Lena drinking, and decided that her girlfriend had enjoyed feeding her too much for Kara herself to not try it. She scooped up a piece, saying, "I know you're full, but ...." she held out the piece of cake that she thought Lena had liked the most.

Lena hesitated, but then her inner desire to see Kara as undone as she herself had just been won out, and she set her water glass down, eyes sparkling with mischief. She turned to her girlfriend, who gulped almost audibly. Lena slowly leaned forward and took the cake into her mouth as sensually as she could, being sure to nearly clean the fork off with her lips as she pulled back.

Kara sat there with with the fork still held aloft, mouth hanging open, and staring at her girlfriend. Specifically, she was staring at her girlfriend's lips, which were still moving as Lena chewed. The blonde had no idea that eating could be so seductive, and when a pink tongue slipped out from between Lena's lips to lick at some errant frosting, Kara shivered involuntarily.

Lena knew she had scored her mark when her girlfriend looked at her like she was either going to fall apart or devour Lena on the spot. Kara's eyes were at first glued to Lena's lips, but as soon as she finished swallowing, Kara's gaze dropped back down to her dress. Lena picked up her glass of wine again, and she took a sip, saying, almost laughing, "Kara, finish the desserts."

"Hmm?" Kara hummed questioningly, voice strangled. She managed to pull her eyes up to Lena's, but only barely, and hadn't heard anything at all of what her girlfriend had just said.

Lena shivered at the completely undone sound of her girlfriend's voice, but kept her control. "Finish up the desserts so I can take you home," she said firmly, and it was definitely an order now.

Kara nodded a little shakily and started devouring the desserts again. By the time she had finished off the last plate, they were both feeling much less overwhelmed by the sight of the other. Lena felt more confident now that they would be able to make it out of the restaurant before doing anything that would most definitely make the front page tomorrow.

Tamara chose that moment to come back and, since she wasn't blind to the basically eyesex that was happening over the table – and they were doing this without even _touching_ , yet they both looked like they were going to combust – she and her cohorts cleared the table with hardly even a sound. Eventually the two women broke eye contact and Giuseppe, one of the co-owners of the restaurant, stepped from behind the barrier.

Smiling and bowing smoothly, he inquired after the meal, receiving Kara's compliments over basically all the dishes with grace. He tried to say that the desserts and wines were on the house, but Lena wasn't having any of it and insisted on both paying for everything. She wanted to know how many people had helped them so she could tip appropriately.

"I'm not leaving till you let me pay," she said intently, "and I highly suggest you do that, and soon, because the longer I stay here the more likely I will be to try and have a fifth dessert on this table." She gave a significant glance towards her girlfriend to indicate that the blonde was the referenced dessert. Lena looked at the manager calmly for a beat before she clapped a hand over her mouth, muttering, "Shit, I didn't mean to say that out loud."

Giuseppe laughed good-naturedly. "Ah, you fight for your lady? Now I understand your insistence." He bowed deeply then to the now-blushing Lena. "Please accept my thanks for choosing to dine with us tonight. Your bill will be right up."

The co-owner left and was replaced by Tamara offering more dessert wine while they waited. Lena took the opportunity to call her driver – thankfully, the man had been waiting nearby and said it would only be ten minutes, if not less. Their server came back with their bill, letting Lena know the number of people who had helped them – the redhead said five – and Lena frowned.

"How many people are working in this restaurant tonight?" she asked instead.

The question threw Tamara, and she blinked. "Um, ... maybe thirty total?" the server said uncertainly, not asking why directly, but the question was there in her tone.

"Excellent, thank you," Lena said, adding in a handful of other people and multiplying the tip she wanted to give by that many. Lena was fortunately very good at math in her head and so the large amount of wine she'd had didn't slow her down at all. She added that on the tip line, closed the privacy booklet and then handed it back to the waiting server. "That tip should be split between everyone."

"Uh, the entire staff?" Tamara almost unable to process the idea.

Lena nodded, and the server bowed before ducking out again. Before the redhead reached the elevator, her curiosity got the better of her and she opened the booklet, glancing at the tip line.


	13. Cake-fueled sex [rated E]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and gentlefolk, dessert is served.
> 
> Note: this chapter has a sex scene, marked with ****** before and after for those who want to skip to or skip over the scene.

"Ok, Lena," Kara said, turning to her girlfriend, "you just made our server squeak – how much did you tip them??"

Lena just shrugged in response, standing up and pulling her girlfriend to her feet after her. "Let's get you home, shall we?" she offered, eyeing her girlfriend's dress again. Kara noticed the look and nodded mutely, gulping.

The car was already waiting out front, and Lena mentally made a note to tip the driver well. The drive home was ... interesting. Lena said they probably shouldn't start anything in the car since they still had to get out and walk again after – but she took Kara's hand and set it on her thigh, then took her own hand and alternately played with Kara's hand or with the hem of Kara's dress where it rested on her girlfriend's thigh. By the time they got home, Kara was red-faced and almost panting with the effort of not letting her hands wander anywhere else.

When the car pulled to a stop, Kara had the door open and was out like a shot, pulling Lena after her by the hand that had been so teasing. Lena barely had time to call over her shoulder, "Thanks Frank, give yourself a tip from me, bye!" and then the car door was closed and the two women were rushing into the building. The doorman and driver both just shrugged at each other.

Kara's lips were on Lena's neck as soon as she pulled them into the elevator, Lena only barely keeping her focus enough to swipe her keycard on the pad to access the top floor. As soon as they started moving upwards, Kara had her girlfriend pressed up against the wall, testing the limits of her setting powder to not smear her lipstick as she drew her mouth from Lena's ear down to the tauntingly low neckline of her dress.

Lena's head was spinning wildly, and after a moment she realized it wasn't just from Kara's lips. "Kara, Kara, babe, gentle," she gasped – ok, the breathlessness was definitely all from Kara – while hanging onto the wall of the elevator, "I'm a little drunk, you have to be gentle."

Kara moved back to Lena's cheek and jawline, her kisses turning indeed much gentler, before she stopped kissing to just nuzzle Lena's ear with a pout.

"Babe, I said gentle, not stop," Lena said laughing, and turning towards Kara to run kisses up and down the blonde's neck. Kara moaned.

The elevator doors dinged open then, and Kara wasted no time in pulling Lena out after her, picking the shorter woman up and holding her close when the distance started to grow between them.

"Kara!" Lena half-gasped, half-laughed, protesting to being carried.

"Don't stop kissing," Kara said, walking them over to Lena's front door.

Thankfully, Lena had installed a handprint pad and so all she had to do to open it was put her hand to the door to get them inside. Otherwise she definitely wouldn't have been able to keep her mouth on Kara's neck and open the door at the same time, and there was definitely one of those two that she didn't want to stop anytime soon and it had nothing to do with doors.

******

... Ok, maybe a little to do with doors, Lena amended, as they stepped inside and the CEO immediately pushed Kara up against the inside of the front door after closing it, nipping at her girlfriend's neck now. Her hands were running up the blonde's sides, and hearing the utterly delicious noises Kara was making caused Lena's hands to seek her girlfriend's neckline, pulling it down, exposing cleavage almost down to the superhero's nipples.

Hands pulled Lena hard into Kara as the shorter woman dipped further down towards the newly exposed flesh, kissing and nibbling, and drawing moan after strangled moan from her girlfriend's throat. Lena's fingers dropped down over the edge of the neckline and popped a breast completely free of the dress and underwire, and Lena cupped the underside of it with a hand as she sucked the nipple into her mouth.

Kara moaned her name loudly, and Lena needed even more, so her free hand started dipping down to seek the bottom hem of Kara's dress. Her girlfriend's hands twisted into her hair, undoing her updo and gripping her tightly against Kara's chest. The blonde's legs seemed to be giving way and she started sliding down the door, so Lena pushed her hips into Kara to keep her there, one thigh slipping between the taller woman's legs and pressing up. Kara's hips rocked unbidden against her thigh.

By now Lena's hand had found the hem and had lifted it up to expose her girlfriend's panties, and now that she had access Lena let go of the hem to put her hand directly against Kara's extremely wet crotch, palm cupping her pubic bump. Kara's hips bucked again and she all but yelled Lena's name.

"Oh god _Lena_ , Lena, I'm gonna come, oh ... _Lena_!" she gasped.

"I'm not even inside you yet," Lena mumbled into a boob, fingers trying to slip around the panties, but the wetness and her drunkenness were preventing her, feeling a little frustrated as she desperately tried to get in. She dropped the other hand from Kara's chest to assist, and stepped her other leg inside Kara's, pressing the blonde's knees outward more, holding her up and against the door with both legs and hands now.

Kara couldn't hold back any longer, and her cries increased in pitch as she repeatedly called out Lena's name, gasping, "I'm coming, I'm coming!"

She cried out and clung to her girlfriend as her whole body spasmed and shook. Lena held her firmly against the door, mouth and hands continuing to work rhythmically and steadily with her girlfriend's movements. Eventually, Kara grew still and she just panted, trying to catch her breath, as her hands and body twitched occasionally.

Lena didn't want to let go yet, but found it difficult to talk with a mouth full of nipple, so she pulled back slightly to tease, "How was that? Feeling better?"

The blonde, hair almost completely undone from rubbing at the door, glasses slightly askew, exhaled a quick laugh. "Oh god, Lena," she husked, voice sounding incredibly well-sexed.

Lena hummed into Kara's breast, licking at the nipple again and drawing a shiver from Kara. "Huh," she said lowly, "and here I thought _you_ were the god."

"And I intend to prove that I am ... in just a second," Kara panted, looking down with mostly closed eyes in what was probably intended to be hungry, but Kara was still too sated.

Lena rumbled a low laugh, and lifted a hand up to help Kara's other breast free. "This one needs some attention too."

Kara moaned again, and this time she definitely managed the hungry look. Suddenly Lena was lifted up into the air and found herself being carried towards the bedroom. "Ok, but you have to take this all off," Lena said, tugging at Kara's dress.

"Oh, I will," Kara said lowly, hurrying to the bedroom and laying Lena down on the bed on her back. The youngest Luthor still had her head firmly against the blonde's breasts, trying to give them both attention. Kara pulled back, popping her nipple out of her girlfriend's mouth.

"Hey come back here, I'm not done yet," she complained, trying to pull Kara back down with a hand on her dress. Kara answered by grabbing both her girlfriend's hands and pinning them to the bed over her head.

"Mmmm," Lena hummed in approval, gazing up at the awe-inspiring sight of her girlfriend towering over her. "Should I keep my hands here? Or did you want to tie me up?" she flirted shamelessly. "I have cuffs, you know, and other toys."

Kara was tempted by the idea and paused. "Not just yet, but keep your hands there until I say. I need more of this amazingly seductive dress and everything that's under it," she said just before ducking down to put her mouth on Lena's collar bone and start biting and sucking. In counterpoint to her kisses against Lena's bare skin, her hands started roving down the sides of the dress.

"This dress," Kara breathed between kisses, "has been teasing me," she bit down on the pulse point where Lena's neck and shoulder met, hands skimming back up to cup Lena's chest, eliciting a moan from her girlfriend, "all night." Kara's hands dusted over all the areas with mesh that hinted at so much more skin below, then dipped down to the hem to forcefully hike it up to Lena's hips in one smooth motion. Lena's legs parted immediately and Kara lowered herself down to press her abs into the junction between Lena's legs, causing the woman under her to arch into her with a loud moan.

" _Kara_ ," Lena panted a little desperately, squirming with the effort of keeping her hands off her girlfriend.

The superhero didn't seem to have the same problem as Lena had with panties, and hooked her fingers over the top to start pulling them down. "I like these, but ...." Kara let the sentence trail off, and then pulled the panties the rest of the way down, lifting up off her girlfriend briefly to drag them sensuously down Lena's legs.

Lena moaned Kara's name again, and the blonde leaned back down, now in a much lower position. The superhero ran her hands from the CEO's thighs around to cup her butt, a cheek in each palm, squeezing gently before dragging her hands back around to rest on either side of her girlfriend's well-trimmed pubic mound, her head hovering just above. Kara paused to look up at Lena's face to gauge how she was doing – and found her girlfriend's eyes riveted to her, with an intensely desperate and needing expression.

Kara couldn't help the pleased smile that spread across her face and she stroked Lena once, thumbs grazing over the sensitive skin of her labia, before she dropped her eyes back down and lowered her head to kiss the curling black hairs, which were surprisingly soft. Lena moaned and rocked her pelvis upwards, as if begging for Kara to touch her, and the superhero decided to stop teasing. She kissed and licked her way downward until she found wet folds, exploring the area thoroughly with her tongue.

Lena was gasping and rocking into Kara's mouth, and panted, "Kara, _Kara_ , I'm going to finish quick like that."

The blonde hummed, but before she could even think about saying anything in response, her girlfriend gasped out loudly and pressed herself hard upward into Kara's mouth, weaving her fingers into the superhero's hair tightly. Kara skated her tongue back over the pulsing nub of Lena's clitoris and got an even louder gasp and a hard squeeze of her hair, her girlfriend unconsciously pumping her lower body rhythmically now. The hero worked her tongue back and forth over the nub, then started circling around it and exploring into the crevices around it, making sure to maintain at least some pressure on the clitoris.

Kara hands suddenly felt a surge of increased wetness, where the blonde had unconsciously been gently massaging Lena's outer labia, and the superhero moaned into her girlfriend's skin. Lena cried out loudly and rocked upwards, simultaneously pushing Kara down into her, and the superhero sensed the desperation in her girlfriend's movements and started rubbing more rapidly. Suddenly Lena arched and started rocking hard, and Kara felt new moisture all over her chin and hands, moaning as she kept licking to match the movements of her girlfriend's orgasm.

Eventually Lena stopped rocking and loosened her grip on Kara's hair, so the blonde gave her one last thorough lick before lifting herself up to give Lena a lazy kiss. Lena opened her eyes back up to see Kara looking mussed and wet-chinned and thoroughly pleased with herself, so the CEO pulled her back in for a slow but lingering kiss, tasting herself on her girlfriend.

"I hope you know I'm not done with you yet," Lena said, still rather breathless.

"Oh, I'm not done with you yet either," Kara replied, and her expression was so mischievous and hungry that Lena surged upwards, reversing their positions and pinning her girlfriend down on the bed with a sound nearly like a growl.

"All this is coming off. _Now_ ," Lena said lowly, and reached for the zipper on Kara's dress.

******

––

Finally worn out, Lena shifted the sheets that had somehow twisted around her hips, so she could roll over and see the clock. It was only 10:30pm.

"I hope your neighbors aren't mad at us," mumbled Kara into Lena's bare chest.

Lena smiled, answering lazily, "I own the entire floor below us – they're guest apartments – and I paid for the best in sound dampening too, so I really doubt anyone heard anything."

Kara gaped at her girlfriend incredulously. "You ... how many guest apartments do you have?"

"There are three on the floor below us. Of course they're not as big as this one but they're fully furnished. If I had family I wanted to see they might be used for that, but mostly I use them for when there's an investor or important client that will be staying long-term, or if there are any employees that have any transition or housing problems."

"Really?" Kara asked sitting up a little. "Because you know Eliza has been staying at Alex's house the last couple weeks and my sister has been complaining about it almost non-stop."

Lena frowned. It was a little weird thinking about calling up the adopted mother of the girlfriend she'd just had several screaming orgasms with while still lying naked with said girlfriend, but the CEO was extremely bothered by the idea that Eliza Danvers was in a potentially bad living situation – not to mention Alex, who'd saved Lena's life. Making a decision, she reached over for her phone on the nightstand.

"Do you think she's still awake?"

Kara considered. "Probably – Alex gets home kinda late."

Lena pulled up the number on her contacts and called. "Dr. Dan- I mean, Eliza, hi, I'm sorry, is this too late? No no, we're fine. Look, Kara just mentioned that you might not have comfortable housing arrangements currently, and I just wanted to let you know that I have three guest apartments available if you'd like to use one."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, that's not where *I* thought the scene was going to end either but ... it just sort of happened?
> 
> I rather like not saying what the tip is in story and just referencing everyone's reactions. For those who are really curious I was originally thinking $50 per employee, but this is _Lena fucking Luthor_ at a high-end restaurant and she just had an amazing evening with her girlfriend, so probably more like $500 per person.


	14. Two worn pictures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got some feels in this one and also some mothering, because Lena could use that in her life.
> 
> Also, this is the 2nd to the last chapter! And the next chapter is really short too, so the end cometh rapidly.

Getting the call last night from her adopted daughter's girlfriend had been a surprise, but Eliza Danvers found that seeing the 'guest apartments' was quite another. Her new place was spacious and very tastefully furnished, and she could definitely see an entire family living in this one flat quite easily. Eliza also found out that she was a just floor down from the CEO and had a card that would allow her access to the top floor, where she could presume that Kara would be most nights. She knew she should give the two lovebirds some space, but she had high hopes that she'd be able to spend more time with both of them, living this close.

When both Kara – who had been right next to the phone when Lena called – and Eliza had asked how well the CEO would do with having a mother figure living so close, even potentially _too_ close, Lena had countered with the fact that she'd never really had a mother figure, and so she was interested in seeing what it was like. Neither Danvers was able to come up with a way to respond to that. In Eliza's opinion, Lena most definitely deserved to have a mother that cared about her – everyone did – and if the girl wanted to know what having a mother was like, well, Eliza was all ready to go.

––

The first time Eliza stopped by just to say hi, it was a surreal experience for Lena. Kara had Supergirl business all evening – something about an alien prisoner transfer – and Jess didn't seem to care that Kara wasn't off that night, 6pm off meant 6pm off. So Lena had grabbed one of the many books she had started reading but hadn't had time to finish, and curled up on the couch with a mug of tea.

The sound of the doorbell ringing startled her, and she wondered who it could be. Only the doorman down below could pass someone up to her, but no one had buzzed from the street. Kara was busy and anyway would have used the balcony to leave/enter. Lena was still working on front-door-training her, which was never something that she would have expected to have to do with a new girlfriend. She peered through the peephole and then everything clicked when she saw who was on the other side. Lena pulled the door open immediately, thinking that maybe there was a problem with the guest apartments.

"Hi, Eliza, is something wrong?" she asked, face concerned.

"Oh, no, dear, nothing's wrong. I just wanted to see you. Jess said that you're getting off work earlier now so I guessed you'd be home."

"Oh," Lena responded, totally uncertain as to what to do now. Blinking and coming back to herself, she pulled the door the rest of the way open and stepped back to let Eliza through. "Oh I'm sorry, please come in."

The youngest Luthor's hostess mode kicked in then and she led Eliza to the kitchen. "Can I get you something to drink? I have a large selection of wines to choose from – one of the perks of being an investor in so many wineries and distributors," she said smiling, reaching for wine glasses. She pegged Dr. Danvers as a wine drinker.

Eliza smiled wryly, and asked, "Were you planning on drinking some wine before I got here?"

Lena paused in the process of setting the wine glasses out. "No? Does that matter?"

Mama Danvers shook her head in mild reproach. "Dear, I'm not a client or even a potential recruit right now – you don't have to wine and dine me, or play perfect hostess. I'm just here to spend time with you and see how you're doing."

The would-be-hostess opened her mouth and then closed it again. This was a new experience for Lena – nearly every interaction in her life had been a transaction, even the ones with her family. She paused there, standing over her wine cupboard, trying to figure out how to ask what she wanted to without sounding totally helpless. Finally she gave up and figured that it was probably best to be blunt in this case.

"Is this what mothers normally do?" she asked.

"Oh Lena," Eliza said sighing, "yes, this is exactly what mothers do. Now come give me a hug and let's go sit on the couch. Or wherever you normally spend time to relax."

Lena accepted the hug, feeling a little off-center, but surprisingly it wasn't a bad feeling. The hug made her feel better too, much like Kara's unquestioning acceptance and support of her did – and now she could tell where Kara had gotten at least part of that from.

"The living room is here, but I guess when I have time and the weather is nice I also sit out on my balcony," Lena said as she walked Eliza to her living room. The CEO stopped then, and turned around. "Actually, would you like a tour of the place?"

Eliza beamed at her. "That would be lovely."

Lena smiled back, feeling off-center again. It felt almost like she was being subtly rewarded. She shook off the feeling, and proceeded to show off her house. Occasionally Eliza would ask about the photos on the wall of Lena in various different places, sometimes taken as a selfie, and sometimes taken by someone else unseen, but there were very few if any pictures of Lena with other people. There were only two photos with other people in them who appeared in a photo with her more than once, and both were of Lex when he was younger. Eliza looked at them but carefully didn't ask about those.

In all honesty, Lena had other pictures of her family, but after her mother started trying to attack or kill her, she went through and took down all pictures of the woman from her house. There hadn't been a lot left after that, but Lena just didn't want the reminder anymore. She idly wished she'd had some father-daughter pictures of just Lionel and herself, so she could at least pretend that she had family that loved her, but honestly she sort of expected at this point that Lionel would turn out to also have been evil in some way. It would just be her luck.

"Lena," Eliza said slowly after a while, hesitantly. "Do you have any photos from your family before you were adopted?"

The youngest Luthor chewed the inside of her cheek in thought. "Well ...." she said trailing off. She turned and padded over to her bedroom and pulled down an old box from the top shelf of her shoe closet – yes, she had a closet entirely for shoes – and set it down on the bed as Eliza walked up to watch her curiously.

From within the box, buried under lots of odds and ends, she pulled out two very worn photos. Laying them on the bed, she said softly, "They're not exactly frame quality anymore."

And they weren't. They looked like they had been handled a lot, the edges almost feathering with the amount of wear, and there were water splotches over the images. It was difficult to make out a lot of detail, but one of them was a young woman holding a baby in swaddling clothes, smiling at the camera. The woman looked strikingly similar to Lena. This was the most worn photo of the two.

The other was of a very young Lena walking next to the same woman and holding her hand, who could be seen this time in profile. This one appeared to be a candid shot – the woman wasn't looking at the camera, but little Lena was, with an expression of perplexed affront that small children sometimes had when they didn't understand what was going on. Young Lena appeared to be perhaps three years old.

"The quality isn't what's important," Eliza said, admiring the photos. "What they mean to you is."

"I suppose so," Lena hedged. She hadn't looked at the photos or even thought of them in years, and she said as much to Eliza. "I used to carry them around in my pocket after I was sent to the orphanage, trying to help fight the sadness after my birth mother died. After a while, I noticed that the pictures were getting worse the more I tried to cling to them, so I had to put them away to keep them, somewhat conversely," she said distantly, lost in memory while staring at the photos. "It's been a recurring theme in my life – things that I love that I have to distance myself from." She blinked and corrected herself. "Things that I loved."

She didn't realize she was crying until something wet ran down her chin, and Eliza pulled her into a hug.

"Oh sweetie, I'm so sorry," she soothed, rubbing Lena's back.

After a while, Lena pulled back, and wiped the remaining wetness from her eyes. She gave a watery chuckle. "I'm not sure I should put them up or I might start the waterworks whenever I walk down the hall."

Eliza ran a thumb lightly over Lena's cheek, drying what wetness remained. "Well, maybe that means you still need to cry about it," she suggested softly. "You can't keep those feelings inside – it's bad for you."

Lena huffed out a laugh. "Yeah, it's pretty obvious I still need to cry." She inhaled sharply and rubbed at her cheeks more thoroughly. "But not right now," she resolved, trying to pull herself together.

"Ok," Eliza replied, accepting the change. She looked back down at the photos. "You know ... there are specialists that can restore photos – they can correct some of the damage from age and yes, even young Lena's tears." She smiled and rubbed one of Lena's shoulders in sympathy.

Lena frowned warily. "I don't want to let anything bad happen to these photos, and I don't know if I trust anyone to not do some damage to them in trying to restore them."

"They don't actually do anything to these photos other than take a high quality scan of them, and then they work their restores from that copy. I had some old photos from my grandmother that were faded and you could barely make anything out, then I took them in and got real images." She smiled at the memory. "I never even knew what my grandmother looked like before then."

The CEO still looked unconvinced.

Eliza said gently, "One of the things that Kara always said she wished she could have from her birth family was photos – unfortunately all the old images of her family before she came to live with us were lost or destroyed, and who knows if the technology to display them would even be the same if they hadn't been. She just has that hologram interface of her birth mother left, but even that helps." She touched a hand to Lena's arm. "You deserve to have your family with you, in any way that you can."

Lena felt the beginnings of the waterworks starting again as she considered. She _would_ like to be able to see her birth mother's face on her walls – it was all she could get now. The CEO nodded finally.

To give herself some time to recover her equilibrium, Lena offered to continue the tour. There were lots of little stories about what had happened when she first bought the place, or when the decorators were going over everything, or when she first moved in, that the CEO hadn't thought about in a long time. She hadn't really had much of a chance to talk about her place with anyone. Kara was the only person who had seen it, other than a few delivery or design people. Lena decided she rather liked doing this – it made her feel like a normal person.

"Well, I'm getting a little hungry," Eliza started to say just as the youngest Luthor was finishing the tour.

"Oh! Well, I don't want to keep you – I'm sure you have other things you need to be doing."

Eliza laughed and stopped her with a hand. "No, I mean to say we should start making dinner." And with that Mama Danvers turned and started walking back to the kitchen.

Lena, caught a little by surprise, took a second to process what the older woman had said, and then hurried to catch up. "Oh, yes we could do that, but I don't exactly have much on hand – nothing fresh anyway. I've been way too busy lately."

With a promise to see what she could do, Eliza walked directly up to the fridge and pulled it open, digging through the contents. Lena stood nearby and felt a little like she was a school girl again, waiting on her report card. She twisted one finger nervously in her other hand, a habit she'd thought that Lillian had broken her of years ago, shortly after she'd gone to live with the Luthors.

Eliza caught sight of her and smiled comfortingly. "Oh don't look so nervous, I'm not going to pronounce judgement on you."

Lena laughed, half-nervously and half-relieved, not entirely believing it, but instead of continuing to stand there the youngest Luthor decided to do something to at least pretend to herself that she wasn't nervous. She pulled down the list that she'd put on the side of the fridge. "I can call for a delivery of groceries, too – usually I do that instead of going into the store because I rarely have time. Although I rather like going into the store after hours when there are fewer people there."

Mama Danvers shooed her away and made her sit down at the bar in the kitchen, insisting that she didn't need anything more to make dinner. So Lena found herself sitting slightly uncomfortably in her own kitchen, while a person who wasn't related to her or paid to take care of her made her dinner. After a few moments of sitting there, Lena decided the least she could do was make small talk – Lena was good at that at least – which made her feel like she was being at least a little useful.

However, when Lena saw Eliza trying to juggle more than one task at once, she couldn't resist any longer. "Please Eliza, let me help – I swear I know my way around a kitchen, even if I don't do it very often."

Eliza blinked up at Lena in surprise when the CEO, without having been told, started dicing the onions that had been left on the counter before Mama Danvers could say anything. "Well, I must admit that's a nice surprise – if there's one thing that my daughters are lacking it's skill in the kitchen. Both of them are takeout junkies."

Lena hummed in thought, and moved on to mash the garlic next, pulling out her expensive garlic press – which was basically self-cleaning and she adored. "That's something that needs to change then, as soon as I can get Kara to myself again. Maybe we can do that on weekends," she mused as she worked.

Dr. Danvers laughed at that. "I'm sure you're a much better motivation than spending time with her mother – not that she doesn't want to spend time with me of course," she said in response to Lena's frankly disbelieving expression, "but there's nothing exciting like a new love interest to spark the desire for self-improvement."

Lena smiled wryly, thinking about her new 6pm end time at work. "That's something I can attest to." Both women laughed.

The two quickly got into a rhythm working together, Lena following Eliza's directions for the most part so they wouldn't run into problems – the CEO had worked on plenty of teams before to know that there should only be one lead, and that despite the expectation she'd cultivated, that lead didn't have to always be Lena. It was one of the many things she'd had to learn working first as a junior researcher and then later as an executive delegating tasks. A good leader knows when to acknowledge that you aren't the expert on the project and follow someone else's superior knowledge while still retaining your authority.

After a while, Lena felt like she needed to comment. "Aren't you ... making quite a lot of food?"

"Yes dear, these will either be for Kara or they can be leftovers – although to be honest, that also means they'll be for Kara. Surely you've noticed how much she eats."

Smiling broadly, she replied, "Yes, I have."

That led to Mama Danvers sharing lots of stories about young Kara trying to sneak out of school to get more food during the day, or going to multiple eateries one after the other so she wouldn't have to eat that much food at any single place and possibly draw attention to the fact that she wasn't normal.

"That must have been expensive – feeding a teenage Kryptonian appetite. How did you afford it?"

"Well, working at the hospital as a doctor helped, so we weren't really strapped for money, and the house had already been paid off before Kara came to us." She shrugged. "I won't lie. There were some months where I swore she'd eat us through even one of my paychecks, especially when she was still trying to get a handle on her strength and would occasionally break something necessary and expensive."

Lena laughed. "I bet there are a lot of funny stories you have about that." She slid the last of the chopped vegetables into the pan – Lena hadn't had a lot of food in the fridge, but somehow Eliza had found a bell pepper and some mushrooms that had completely dried out after they'd been forgotten at the back of the fridge, so they were fine with the addition of some liquids and heat. "Poor Kara," she said, grinning.

"Poor me what?" A familiar voice said near the entrance to the kitchen. Lena turned to see Kara standing there still in her supersuit, the hero's brow furrowed slightly. "And why are you grinning when you say that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only a little bit left.
> 
> I've wanted to write some more for this story, but haven't gotten a chance yet so I have no idea when that will happen (especially since I have my Won't Let Her Go story just sitting there waiting). Not sure if I should call this fic finished and then add a new work as a continuation, or leave it hanging open until I decide to close it or add more. Right now I'm leaning towards the former because I like leaving things in as finished a state as a I can (and also I'm trying to break my habit of never finishing projects).


	15. Family

Wide smile instantly covering her face, Lena quickly crossed the kitchen – nearly running, if she were honest with herself – to grab her girlfriend in a hug and kiss her soundly. When they broke for air, Lena clarified, "Poor teenage Kara who kept breaking things in the house."

"Expensive things, too," Eliza pointed out.

Kara winced, and Lena decided she wanted to wipe that wince away with more kisses, peppering her girlfriend's face with them. "Don't worry, love – I have lots of money to replace broken appliances with," she grinned, unrepentant, as she pulled back.

Supergirl groaned into Lena's shoulder. "I can't believe I accepted your bracelet if this is how you're going to treat me," she pretend-groused.

Lena giggled. "It's too late now!" she exclaimed brightly, ducking back out of the hero's arms to stir the veggies in the pan.

Eliza took that chance to get her hug, too. "Just in time for dinner, which I'm pretty sure must be your secondary superpower with how often you manage to do it."

Kara huffed. "Or maybe you're just trained to know when I need to eat!"

Eliza hustled Kara into setting the table while she and Lena pulled everything off the stove. They grabbed everything and headed over to the dining room, only to find the table still bare. "Kara?" Lena called, "Where did you- oh!"

Kara popped around the doorway before she finished asking the question. "Ohhhh, we're eating in here? One sec." She blurred and was gone.

"No superspeed in the house," called Eliza, somehow both bored and authoritative, like she'd said this same directive a hundred times.

"But this isn't your house," Kara sassed back, zipping back into the room with all the plates and tableware in her hands. She blurred around the table and had them all set up within a blink of the eye.

Lena giggled again. "Ok then, no superspeed in the house," she said, smiling at Kara's resulting pout.

"That's not fair – I haven't even broken anything yet here with superspeed!"

"I should wait until you break something before enacting that rule? Shouldn't the rule be to prevent such things from happening?"

"Well ...," Kara hedged, pushing the tableware around on the tabletop as a temporary distraction.

Scooping out stirfry onto her plate, Lena relented. "I don't mind as long as you don't break those old photos I just pulled out on the bed – speaking of that, I should go put them away before I forget." She got up from the table immediately.

"Old photos?" Kara asked, turning an inquisitive look at Eliza after Lena had left the room, starting to stuff food into her mouth.

"Photos from her birth mother. I asked if she had any, and so she showed them to me."

"Oh wow, really??" Kara asked, excited. "Lena, can I see them before you put them away?"

Lena came back into the dining room with an envelope in her hand – she'd done a little bit of searching on her phone when Eliza had taken a break to go to the bathroom, and found that she should put them in a special type of paper to prevent the photos from degrading further. Fortunately, Lena stocked all kinds of things in her house, and some of them were envelopes especially for photos.

"Alright, but please don't touch them – apparently the oils on your fingers degrade the ink used in photos." She pulled out one and then the other and laid them on the table a bit to the side of Kara's place setting.

"Awww!" Kara cooed. "You were such a cute little thing. And wow," she said, leaning closer, "you look a lot like your birth mom."

Lena smiled, but found her throat a little too tight to try speaking, and just nodded. Before she could get too caught up in her emotions, she took a deep breath and then put the photos away. Once they were safely back in their envelope, she finally found her voice again. "I'm going to try and have them restored and then hang them up." She walked back off to the bedroom to put them back in their box, although they were now more protected being inside the envelope. Lena slid it up onto the top shelf, and then turned around to see Kara standing there – her blonde girlfriend instantly pulled her into a tight hug, not saying anything but just holding her.

The youngest Luthor returned the hug, breathing deeply into Kara's shoulder. Finally she pulled back, saying, "Come on, we left Eliza alone."

"She's fine," Kara said, not moving. "Are _you_ fine? Do you want to talk about it?"

Lena sighed, a little shakily. "Not right now, but yes, I'll be fine." She felt like she needed a little distance from the pictures – or more specifically from the emotions that the pictures produced.

"Ok," said Kara, relieved that at least her girlfriend realized the need to talk, even if she didn't want to just yet.

They went back to the table and sat down to eat, Eliza and Kara making some light conversation mostly between themselves until Lena felt like joining in, which the youngest Luthor appreciated. Eventually Lena moved the conversation to Eliza and how well she was settling in downstairs. It had only been a couple days since the doctor had moved in, and Lena was interested to know if she needed anything.

"Well," Eliza said, eyes sparkling with amusement, "I could probably use a trip to the grocery store."

Lena laughed, inwardly wondering if this was what having family was like. It was definitely something she could get used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, that's it folks! I want to eventually add more onto this story, but I'm going to keep posting everything I have already written first. I have at least one more SuperCorp fic, a SwanQueen, a Star Wars femslash fic, wow I really got to get posting. Never fear, more cute fluff is on the horizon.
> 
> Until then, happy reading everyone and I hope you enjoyed this story as much as I did writing it!


End file.
